


MANIA

by fresh_hellion



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Gratuitous Violence, I hate oc centric stories but guess what its a new me and i'm out here living my worst life lol, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Multi, OC-centric, Other, Pining, Slow Burn, So many 80s references, angry sullen snarky teens, characters ROASTING TF out of steve harrington tbh lol, does anybody even care about what's written here this is a genuine question, dramatic teenage girls, fasten your seatbelts kiddies, girl fights, high school archetypes, i'd say i'm sorry but we all know i'd be lying lmao, i'm talkin ambiguous as shit references idec, lmao these tags are a mess someone save me, lol what are these tags even, mean high school kids, night of the living background characters, oc has psychic powers lol, oc is a bitch you've been warned lol, teenage bullies, the shameless victimization of billy hargrove, well i'm pretty sure this story is gonna be a mistake but here we go yee to the haw bitch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-04-17 17:49:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 236,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14194392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresh_hellion/pseuds/fresh_hellion
Summary: "... it would inevitably become a problem, because she was an immovable object, and Billy Hargrove was an unstoppable force. Their clash could only end in mayhem."Billy Hargrove moves to the cultural wasteland of Hawkins, Indiana, and it is so majorly shitty. No good music, no good pussy, and no-good King StevefuckingHarrington running the show. Everything sucks, and then he encounters Mandy Mueller, a miserable, stuck-up bitch with secrets aplenty, who ends up being a lot more fun than she lets on. Suddenly, there are games to be played, and Billy finds himself feeling significantly less shitty about his move.OR: OC is very busy and self-important, and doesn't really give a shit about the new boy in school, until he starts harassing her.*Third-person narrative with changing character povs. Set mid/after season 2. Mostly canon-compliant (I guess??? well, as much as can be with an oc in the mix, lol) and most characters will probably appear at some point in this story along with a variety of OCs and vague, nameless background characters I'll probably try to breathe life into, lol.Come for the obnoxious teenage melodrama, and stay for the accidental plot!





	1. Talking in Your Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> So, lol, I've been thinking about posting this forever now after going years without writing, and now I've finally done it because I'm so tired of the good girl falls for bad boy trope in this fandom. Ya girl is THROUGH, okay? I have wanted a petty teenage bitch in Stranger Things for soooOOOoOooo long, and for the second season they introduced Billy and Max and NO EVIL TEENAGE GIRLS. So, this is me trying to remedy that. Lol, sorry to everyone who will hate this.
> 
> *Warnings that will probably apply at some point in this story: Vulgar language, name calling (lol, I wish this one was a joke), harassment, underage drinking/drug-use, general political incorrectness and ignorance, toxic masculinity, sexism, racism, violence, sexual themes, mentions of rape/rape culture, and just general 1980s stupidity. Please, do not behave like these characters, lol, they're literally the worst. 
> 
> Anyway, now that that's out of the way, GOOD LUCK READING WHAT LIES AHEAD, FRIENDS! :)

The dreams were getting worse for Mandy Mueller.

“Sister?” A voice called through the darkness. Mandy squinted into the vast emptiness, spotting a white blip amidst a blanket of black. And then splashing, and the white blip becoming colors and shapes. She could just make out a form, and then she was awash with anxiety. Nope, she thought, not again. The last time she had one of these dreams, whatever greeted her was not even remotely human. It was a horrible snarling monster with a face that opened up like a black hole, and she had cried when she first laid eyes on it, shaking and trembling and telling herself that nightmares weren’t anything to be scared of. That didn’t stop her from waking up on the kitchen floor, screaming and clawing at her mother’s face. She told herself that her bruises were from her sleep-walking, because certainly, nightmares couldn’t hurt you, right?

“Sister!!” The voice shrieked as she turned her back and began sprinting in the opposite direction, “Please, come back!!”

Every step she took dragged, water kicking up in her stride, slapping splashes echoing through the vastness. She felt like she was sinking, the water rising to her knees, and she couldn’t tell if the water levels were actually rising or if she was falling through the floor. Honestly, she really didn’t care, she just knew that she was not going to stop for whatever was chasing her.

“Wait!” It called again, and Mandy’s breath hitched high in her throat when she realized how close it was, “No!!”

Mandy ran faster, choking loudly and forcing herself to push past the cold stabbing sensation that was rising up in her body. 

“You have to wake up!!” The voice called as she wheezed, “WAKE UP!!”

Her eyes opened to muffled silence, and a blurry aquamarine world. Her hair floated around her in silvery wisps, and she could just make out the grout between the tiles before her eyes as her limp limbs were grabbed and she was yanked out of the water and into the frigid cold. 

“What the hell are you doing?!” A masculine voice shouted at her as she coughed raggedly.

“I—“ She began, only to be cut off as someone came up from behind her, small hands on her shoulders.

“Are you okay?” She recognized the soft tones of Nancy Wheeler without even seeing her as a towel was draped over her shoulders, “We thought we heard screaming.”

“I—” She tried again, her teeth clattering together, and a voice still ringing in the back of her mind.

“You what?!” The face of Steve Harrington appeared under her heavy and glistening eyelashes, “Just thought you’d take a nice little midnight swim in your carebear pjs?!”

Mandy frowned, her brows pulling together, opening her mouth to retort, only for Nancy to cut in above her, “Geez, Steve!! You don’t have to yell at her like that!”

“Barb is still missing!” Steve announced, “Think you could keep the stupid asshole pranks for after the body is found, Mandy?!”

Mandy choked on whatever words were going to leave her mouth, her lips parting to release a shrill, “What?!”

“Steve,” Nancy sighed, rubbing Mandy’s shoulders from behind her, “I don’t think this was a prank.”

“Uh, yeah!” Mandy added unhelpfully, tugging the towel around her securely as she got a grasp of her surroundings. Steve Harrington’s backyard; forest, jacuzzi, pool, and floaties bobbing placidly above the cerulean waves registered in her mind. She drank a little too much and said she was going to take a nap after a small get together and hopefully wake up sober and ready to go home. But that didn’t happen. She instead slept-walked right into the pool and decided to just hang out under the water. Great, she thought, she almost fucking killed herself. 

“Then what the hell do you call this, Nance?” Steve questioned, one hand on his hip and the other gesticulating wildly.

“It’s called sleep-walking, Dipshit!” Mandy shouted, standing up to glare at him evenly without having to look up at him. She swung the towel from over her shoulders, and swatted him in the face with it before speed-walking back to the house, “God, you’re such a fucking idiot, Harrington!!”

The sound of the glass door sliding shut with a snap followed her departure. 

* * *

She was going to stay as far away from Steve Harrington and Nancy Wheeler as was physically possible. She would be potentially losing a tutor for science, but it was worth it. Nancy Wheeler was a nice girl, if not a little bit odd, but having to explain slightly psychotic incidents like fighting invisible monsters in the middle of the night would definitely turn off even a nice-odd girl like Nancy, and Mandy could not risk the rest of the school knowing her secret. 

High School in a town like Hawkins was either the the best or worst of scenarios for teens. It was small—like so ridiculously small, that when she had first moved to the town, she would cry at the lack of everything. Mandy was once a girl who walked to the mall after school, who went out to eat at Chinese restaurants, and studied on a grassy lawn amidst a jungle of concrete buildings, watching the world go by. Hawkins’ closest thing to a mall was the local sears, there wasn’t any type of restaurant in the town that didn’t serve mash-potatoes, and the tallest building was four stories, maybe. And the kids that grew up in Hawkins didn’t know any better; they grew up with a collective of twenty-something other kids who all looked and acted vaguely like them, and they knew absolutely nothing else of the world—it was why mediocre boys like Steve Harrington were major studs in Hawkins. 

Steve Harrington, whose only redeeming factor was that he drove a BMW, and whose crowning achievement was that he could drink cheap alcohol the fastest. 

Like, seriously? _Steve Harrington?_ It was all so tragic, really.

Mandy Mueller knew her odds if her secret got out in a small-minded town like Hawkins. Her image would plummet. She would go from exalted to whatever-the-fuck Jonathan Byers was—a freak, or pariah, or at the least, treated like shit. She was just too pretty for all of that, honestly, and it would be unfair to her, because she really was an ugly crier. Probably the ugliest, she thought, she never invested in water-proof mascara. She pondered doing just that.

Stepping out of her white cabriolet, she adjusted her white polo collar, setting it high and adjusting her acid-wash jacket as she lugged her bag over her shoulder, a cloud of long gold hair being tossed away from her face. She looked good, and she knew it—girls in Hawkins could only dream about wearing brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Guess, and Calvin Klein, but Mandy Mueller lived in them. It was her cool-factor; Mandy Mueller was pretty, and had amazing hair, and wore brand names—she was perfect, and it was because she was rich. 

She saw a flash of the back of her head in her own mind, and adjusted one of her long curls, twisting it around her finger and settling it back in place.

“Mandy, hey! Wait up!” A voice called from behind her, and she twisted around with a smile on her face. Tommy and Carol, a duo synonymous with emotional assault, appeared before her eyes, and she was ready to scream and flee. She could see it in their eyes, hear the thoughts behind them, and smiled even wider, putting on a strong front even though she knew trouble was coming and that she was helpless to stop it. 

“Yeah, Mueller,” Tommy began, laughing, “Wait up, you’re practically running!”

“We were so worried, Mandy!” Carol began, faux sincerity apparent in her tone, as loud and boisterous as it was. Eyes of fellow high schoolers loitering outside of school fell to their forms, and Mandy’s heart beat a rhythm so strong she could feel it in her fingers. At least, she tried to placate herself, she looked good. Her hair was windblown and her legs looked long, and her makeup was effortless—she looked at ease, totally cool. Undeniably cool. Poster child for cool. Right, except she was silently losing her shit. She was so stressed that her ass was sweating. She was so fucked.

_Damn_ , she heard from the distance, someone’s mind echoing from behind her, _Wish that girl would wrap her legs around my head._

Under normal circumstances, she would be indignant. But she was under duress, and instead of anything remotely reproachful in her thoughts, all she could think was yes, she was fuckable and undeniable. She was the girl in gross boys’ fantasies, and Carol sucked mediocre dick, and Tommy _had_ a mediocre dick. They weren’t shit, she reminded herself. They caused a scene, and still, people looked at her. 

“We heard about what happened at Steve’s,” Tommy stated, actually sounding vaguely concerned, and it threw Mandy a bit, “You fell and almost died in the pool!”

The statement caused ripple effects around them, and Mandy wondered if her eyes briefly crossed, because it sure as shit felt like it. Everyone’s minds all lingered on the word ‘pool’, and she was going to literally murder Harrington. Like, actually kill and bury his ass. Steve Harrington was a dead man walking.

Carol laughed at her boyfriend, slapping his abdomen with the back of her hand, “God, shut up, Tommy! You can’t just say things like that! Besides, I heard you had a nightmare and were crying and everything!”

“What?” Mandy questioned, brows furrowed as she concentrated on blocking out everyone’s minds from her own thoughts, “Who told you that?”

As if the heavens opened up to reveal the source, Steve Harrington stepped out of his BMW at the exact moment that the overcast sky parted, casting sunlight on his stupid helmet-hair. He squinted up at the sky like a complete dumbass, and put his ray bans over his eyes as he grumbled to himself. She was so focused on him, she could make out his thoughts as if she herself were thinking them.

_I’m gonna fail the pop quiz, shit._

__

_Coach is gonna make me run laps._

__

_Maybe Nancy can help me? Would she cheat for me? Wait, would she cheat on me? Jonathan Byers isn’t ev—_

__

Mandy Mueller honestly questioned what anyone could see in Steve Harrington; the boy’s mind moved like it was wading in syrup. What a headache, Jesus Christ. She groaned slightly, rubbing at her forehead. 

“-Eve said that people were going to start thinking he was a serial killer or something!” Tommy laughed, and Carol followed suit, making Mandy smile half-heartedly, the attempt looking more like a grimace than anything close to amusement, before turning her back and marching off. Tommy and Carol were stooges who were wasting her time, and she needed to ruin Steve Harrington’s life before the end of the day.

“Hey! What the hell?!” Carol shouted as she continued walking, “Are you really just gonna walk away like that?!”

“Yeah!” Tommy exclaimed, “You didn’t even answer the question!!”

They were dutifully ignored, and Carol yelled over the hushed murmurs, “Fine, be that way! Lame bitch!!”

Mandy didn’t even bother turning around as she wove through parked cars, “Oh, get an actual life, Carol! Get a hobby that doesn’t involve your boyfriend’s unsatisfactory dick and invest in better clothes!”

She could hear the oohs of the crowd that had formed, and rolled her eyes as she walked around a blue Camaro, pausing only briefly in front of the car to squint at it when she realized it had California plates. Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she stalked off. As if she even gave a shit.

* * *

She found him in the hallways, and she was planning on ambushing him. Steve seemed his usual clueless self, if not a little uneasy, and Mandy tapped her long, painted fingernails against the spine of the book she was holding to her chest as she contemplated talking to him. He was an asshole, so she shouldn’t have even hesitated on chewing him out, but it was also _Steve Harrington_ , and people liked him. It was a bit of a toss up if things became ugly which side of the social spectrum she would end up on. 

Ugh, also Tommy was with him, and she already insinuated he gave poor dick, and really, that was just going to end up in two against one, with her losing. She really was amazed by how all her poor judgement calls were coming back for her so soon. Talk about unlucky.

“Mandy!” A voice called, and she turned her head to spot a semi-popular girl named Becky marching her way and waving enthusiastically. She moaned slightly, but tried to look approachable nonetheless, which took more effort than she thought she was capable of. 

“Hey, Babe,” She smiled, looking at the girl’s wind-breaker she sported for the seasonal drop in temperature, “That top is so cute on you. Oh my God! Where’d you buy it?”

Mandy was friendly. Totally friendly. Like, the friendliest. And so cool. Of course she’d notice the jacket.

“Oh, thanks! My mom bought it for my birthday. We went to the city and bought it at Macy’s!” She grinned, grabbing the lapels and popping the collar as she showed it off by turning side to side.

“Ugh! So lucky! I’m jealous,” Mandy announced, grabbing the bottom of the jacket and running the nylon material between her fingers, “It’s so cute.”

“Anyway,” Becky readjusted herself, shrugging and waving a hand flippantly, “That’s not what I came to talk to you about.”

“Okay…?” Her tone betrayed her hesitance, and Mandy giggled lightly, hoping to play off humored rather than nervous. She was too cool for nervous. Luckily, Becky laughed loudly over whatever sound she emitted.

“Oh, my God, okay!” She began, jumping a bit in place, her sky-high hair-style bouncing on the back of her head, “So, you met the new guy, right?”

Mandy rose her brows, looking vaguely clueless. She was a bit preoccupied by her life crumbling in her grasp at any moment, and plotting Steve Harrington’s social demise, but whatever, she could talk about some new guy. She dipped into Becky’s consciousness, getting flashes of a fast car and a loud engine, a rasping voice and smirking lips. She realized belatedly, she had actually talked to him earlier that day. He had sat behind her, kicked his legs out, and eyed her the whole class, tapping her shoulder and asking about a math question. She blew him off, telling him she wasn’t at that question yet. It was the second question on the worksheet, hilariously, but he didn’t say anything about it. What a champ.

“Oh, right!” Mandy answered belatedly as Becky eyed her warily. Becky’s mind echoed a singular thread of thoughts: _Can’t actually believe a guy like Billy would ever think Mandy Mueller was worth his time. She’s a total bimbo. I guess tits can make guys forget about anything._

Okay, so Becky was kind of a two faced bitch. Mandy had technically heard worse, but god, give her a break! She was a bit busy with other things besides some boy who wasn’t even worth her time in the first place. Like ruining Steve’s life. And maybe killing him. Also, magazines and shopping and asking her dad for these amazing diamond earrings she saw in Vogue. They were Cartier, and she was slightly obsessed. She had been working on the pitch for asking him to buy them for the past month. Oh, and also, _Bitch_ , her nightmares might be real and trying to kill her. Actually almost did this weekend. She really did not give a shit about some random guy who made the mistake of wandering into the depressing little town of Hawkins, Indiana.

“Yeah, I saw you two talking today in Math,” Becky stated, and Mandy’s brows jumped on her face at how heavy she made that statement seem. Like, Mandy reasoned, they literally spoke ten words at the most, “Anyway, he was talking to Amy and he told her—”

Oh, no. Amy who was friends with Becky. Both semi-popular girls who had dated Steve Harrington, most popular boy in school, purely for status, and now both talked about some new guy, acting like he was a god who arrived in Hawkins to bless the entire female population. A new guy who talked about her, who tried to talk to her in class, and was now about to sic some of the most ruthless girls in school on her. Well, shit. Her world had gone from grains of sand slipping through her fingers to a handful of lit fireworks ready to go off in her grasp at any moment. 

“—about this chick wearing a denim outfit who totally wrecked Tommy and his girlfriend this morning,” Mandy’s attention refocused on Becky, the far away look in her eyes replaced by mild alarm, “And he was like, ‘who is this girl?’ Right? Like he was so curious as to who you were! Can you believe it?! You!! Of all people?!!”

The end of that statement sounded a bit spiteful, Mandy thought. It was not absurd for a guy to like her. She was the whole package, thank you very much, so Becky could have toned down all the disbelief. Mandy actively tried to be nice to Becky, and kind of liked her, so it was a little cruel how petty she was being over some guy. But Mandy had an idea on how to get out of this situation.

“Did Amy tell you that?” Mandy asked, looking confused, and Becky paused, her jealous half-formed thoughts dissipating behind her eyes.

Becky narrowed her eyes suspiciously, “Yeah, why?”

“Like, are you sure?” Mandy asked again, bright eyes wide with surprise as she lowered her voice, “Was she sure he was talking about me?”

“Of course he was,” Becky shot back hotly, her voice lowering as well, “Why? What’d you hear?”

“Uh, you said it yourself! He actually talked to me in math,” She explained secretively, pointing to Becky obviously, “He was totally asking about you!!”

“What?!” Becky shouted a decibel too loud, and a few heads turned in the girls’ direction, “No way, Mandy!”

“Yes, Becky!” Mandy retorted in the same tone, “Second row, third from the window, right? That’s you!”

“Oh, my God!!” Becky grabbed her head in her hands, “Are you sure?”

“Well, you were in your seat today, right?” Mandy laughed easily.

“Yes! Ugh! I can’t believe Amy,” Becky announced, throwing her head back dramatically, “Like how could she just lie to me just because she was jealous!? We’ve been friends since we were kids!”

Mandy widened her eyes, blinking owlishly and shrugging innocuously from behind her thick textbook, “I don’t know. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe she would do that to you.”

She might have laid that on a little thick, but Becky was oblivious. Her mind imagined a scenario where a blue-eyed bad-boy asked the undeniably cool Mandy Mueller about her, and Becky’s mind was a thick haze, emotions flooding over any coherent thoughts that came after. She wandered away starry-eyed and heart full with fuzzy feelings, and left Mandy staring after her unimpressed.

Well, that was just a little bit too easy, Mandy commented into the quiet recesses of her mind, so easy if felt like it wasn’t really over.

* * *

Jonathan Byers had a pretty mind. It was like an antiquated painting that was once a beautiful masterpiece. It held a low hum of The Clash underneath all his other thoughts, so everything kind of rolled together in a gentle medley of tambourines and guitar strumming. It was nice, almost mellow—like a trickling stream. Mandy needed mellow. Mandy craved mellow, she thought haplessly, trudging along after him through the hallway as she exited school for the day. Jonathan Byers was lucky he was so lame and unextraordinary. He escaped so much drama. He had no clue how difficult life was for a young beautiful girl like her.

“Hey, Mandy!” A voice called from behind her, and Mandy stopped, running a hand through her hair miserably. She couldn’t escape! She would never get out of school at this rate, “Oh, whoa. Are you okay? You don’t look too good.”

Nancy fucking Wheeler dared to say Mandy Mueller didn’t look good. In front of actual people. What a socially-inept gimp! 

“Okay, Nancy! Shout it from the fucking rooftops, why don’t you?!” Mandy gesticulated wildly, waving her arms around violently, “I don’t think China heard you!!”

“Ouch, that bad? Sorry,” Nancy mumbled, clutching her books closer to her chest, eyebrows pinching together pitifully, “I was just wanting to see how you were doing.”

“Hey,” The athletics coach stepped out of a door and pointed to the two girls warningly, “Indoor voices, girls!”

Mandy twisted her head around her shoulders so fast she looked like a stand-in for the exorcist as she glared at the middle-aged man. Last thing she needed was some dusty old dude causing more problems for her.

Nancy chuckled awkwardly, waving a dainty hand to the older man, “Sorry, Coach. Just excited about school being over, I guess.”

Mandy turned back to look at the mousy girl, expression flat and lifeless.

“I hate him,” Mandy announced under her breath, making a disgusted sound in the back of her throat, “He’s so bossy.”

Nancy waved at the man as they passed him, a sudden snort escaping her at the blonde’s words. She slapped a hand to her mouth, gasping at the sound she made, and Mandy laughed at the smaller girl’s expression, “Ha! Oh, my god, Wheeler! Look at your cute little face!”

Nancy laughed with her, trying to shush her at the same time, “Okay, okay! Please, don’t yell things like that!”

“Okay, Nance,” Mandy shrugged, smirking down at the shorter girl, “What’d you want really?”

“I just wanted to say sorry,” She began, and Mandy’s feathered brows rose a fraction, “For Steve.”

Mandy rolled her eyes, expression falling off her face to settle at obvious boredom by the topic of discussion. She waved her hand flippantly as they strolled out of the school building side by side.

“Honestly, Nancy. I was worried you had something serious to tell me,” Mandy sighed, looking slightly relieved at the topic discussion, “Also, don’t go around apologizing to people for your stupid boyfriend. You’re way too good for Steve Harrington, y’know? Let him solve his own problems and do his own apologizing.” 

Nancy Wheeler croaked out a sound of bewilderment as Mandy Mueller turned away from her to make her exit. She watched the girl trot through the crowded parking lot, weaving through groups of teens and cars, long hair bouncing and gleaming in the waning autumn light. Disbelief clouded all coherent thought as Nancy began wandering aimlessly to her ride home, clumsily bumping straight into Jonathan Byers back. 

“Whoa!” He spun around, startled, before smiling when his gaze landed on Nancy, “You all right there, Nancy?”

“Yeah,” She mumbled distractedly, “Just… Did you catch the conversation I just had, by chance?”

Jonathan’s brow wrinkled, confusion contorting his features, “No, why? What’s wrong? Who were you talking to?”

“Mandy Mueller,” Nancy answered, voice floaty and gaze up at the sky for a moment, “I think she just told me I was too good for Steve.”

Jonathan’s brows rose in obvious surprise, “Wait, you’re talking about Mandy Mueller, the one we go to school with, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” Nancy answered, looking confused, “That’s weird, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jonathan agreed, “Definitely weird.”


	2. The Bad Touch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> half of this was meant to be in the first chapter, but I didn't want to go back and edit, so I'm just gonna post this as one big chapter lmao SORRY GUYS! but, good news is there's a little Billy pov in here so woohoo betches 
> 
> *also, fair warning - Billy is a creep in this story, lol, I feel like I need to warn y'all before this chapter. I really don't think I'm gonna water down his character (even though he really has no screen time lnfjdcbjdsknajk). And I know that a lot of people kind of like to make him a villain with a heart of gold or w/e, which is great and all, but I kind of wanted to try a different approach to writing his character. So, with all that in mind, ENJOY BABIES & pls tell me if it sucks and if I need to get a new hobby sometime soon lmao ok folks

Starkness. Footsteps echoing back to her ears. Bleak shadows. She had been here before. But, she paused looking around the desolate landscape, something was off. Somewhere, distantly but also right beside her, there was an unnatural humming. Or maybe it was buzzing. Either way, it irritated her, and she glared out into the cavernous darkness. She could just make out shrouded shapes along the edges of her vision, and it set every nerve ending inside her thrumming to the tune of her heartbeat. 

It beckoned, sliding along the floor towards her as a hazy inkiness. The thrumming inside her picked up, and the only thing she could imagine was that odd quietness that came before a thunderstorm. Looming destruction, and silent promises. Bad things were coming. 

Too bad, she was already here.

“Fuck off,” Mandy Mueller was already a storm, impatient and impetuous, undeniable and unstoppable. She was reckless abandon and wicked decisiveness. She was trouble on good days, and on days she was particularly bored, she could raise an army. Nobody could impede her when she set her eye on something, and nobody could ever think to command her in any way. Nice try, though, she thought.

These dreams were usually terrifying, but this was different. There was no tangible monster before her, and there was no violently clear voices. No immediate danger, only looming promises. Plans yet put into effect, and wicked ideas. A distant, rolling thunder that sounded so small and so sad compared to the wild, untamable roar within her. 

The shadows howled as the vibration inside her grew, her bones rattling and her blood feeling like it was filled with fizzing energy. It made her feel ticklish all over, and she grinned, watching as her effervescent energy cut through the shroud, sending the plumes scattering into glittering nothingness before her very own eyes. They looked crystalline once they dissipated slowly, sparkling and suspended in mid-air, like water droplets in slow motion or diamonds in those slow-turning displays at the mall. So pretty, she remarked, the horrific shrieking of the shadows fading as they retreated from her in serpentine tendrils. 

“And don’t come back, Shithead,” She smirked into the abyss, knowing it was seething somewhere in the hidden shadows. She could hear its non-thoughts and see through its non-eyes. It was everywhere she wasn’t, and it loathed that it couldn’t come closer, couldn’t sink into her consciousness too. It wanted and needed it. And it hated her more than anything now that she denied it. 

Boo hoo hoo. Cry about it. Like honestly, did it think it was the first being to ever hate her? Ha! Please, Bitch. Get a hobby; take up knitting, call your mom, whatever. But first, get the hell over yourself.

* * *

Mandy Mueller was a frigid fucking bitch. She spoke in monosyllables, and wore 4 carat diamond earrings and tight Calvin Klein jeans. Billy Hargrove couldn’t get the girl to speak more than a sentence to him, and the only sound he ever heard from her when she was in his vicinity was the annoying chime of her jangly gold bracelets. It was fucking infuriating.

If he were back in California, he wouldn’t have looked twice. Queen bees weren’t his type, anyway. He didn’t have the patience or the time. Besides, the sex would probably be boring. Prissy girls just didn’t put any work in, and they didn’t understand any concept of sex that didn’t involve laying there like a fucking corpse. But he wasn’t in California anymore, and all semblance of sense was thrown to the wind. As it stood, Mandy Mueller was the only thing worth looking at twice in the cow-shit town of Hawkins, Indiana. And still, he resented the fact that she actually made him look twice.

“Hey, Mandy!” Amy Radner, a brunette who was a little bit Cindy Crawford if he squinted just right, called from her position draped over his shoulder as Queenie marched by, hair tossed over her shoulders and bracelets chiming. He pulled a Marlboro between his lips and busied himself with lighting it just to have something else to focus on besides the girl stopped before him. He had a feeling Radner got her attention to show off the fact that she was hanging off him. Something in him reveled in the idea that he was being used to make the school’s queen bee jealous. Because, of course, at Hawkins High there wasn’t much else in the male population to boast about besides him. Unless one counted Steve Harrington, but Billy definitely did not.

Just thinking of _King_ Steve Harrington and his limp fucking noodle legs pissed him off. He blew a smooth stream of smoke out of his nose in one long exhale. Fucking Harrington, that Gumby-looking motherfucker.

“Hey,” Mueller replied drolly, eyes hidden by a pair of shiny sunglasses. They were designer. Of fucking course. He expected nothing else.

“You missed the party this weekend!” Amy called, looking more excited then she had before at being acknowledged. Or maybe she had just been waiting to talk to Mueller all morning, whatever, “We all wanted you there!”

Had they? Billy wondered. What could have been missing at the rager last weekend? He couldn’t exactly imagine Ice Queen Mandy Mueller being an enjoyable presence amongst all the noise and chaos. 

“Oh, yeah?” She replied coyly at Amy’s proclamation.

“Oh, my God, you should’ve been there! Everyone was talking about you after what happened with Harrington!” He registered her reaction before he even reacted to the words. Any semblance of cool was replaced with suspicion as she snagged off her glasses, exposing her furrowed brows and narrowed eyes. Only after Billy saw her expression did he turn to Amy, mirroring a similar look of confusion.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” He asked before Mandy could begin to reply, her mouth poised into an ‘o’. It didn’t stop her, though, and she practically shouted over his low tone. He almost jumped at how unusually intense she was.

“What happened with Harrington?!” Amy looked too proud at both of their obvious bewilderment. It kind of pissed him off. Bitch thrived off drama and attention, and he decided right then he was done with Amy Radner. Fucking little snake that she was, playing with him like that. He really didn’t need that kind of shit right now.

“Nancy Wheeler and him got into a huge fight,” Amy replied, smile wide, looking up at him, then turning to level Mueller with an even wider grin, pointing an accusing finger right at her, her entire being bouncing with excitable energy, “He threw punch on her and everything, and everyone is saying it was over you!”

Mueller made a face, releasing a strained and painful sound from the back of her throat. Her brows turned up as she finally croaked out, “Me?”

“Carol said you told Wheeler to dump him,” Amy announced, and Billy smirked at that, brows jumping toward his hairline as he looked to Mandy expectantly. Did Queenie just ruin King _fucking_ Steve’s reign before he even got the chance? He had suspected that King Steve Harrington and Ice Queen Mandy Mueller were best fucking friends. Or at least fuckbuddies. What an interesting turn of events. 

“No fucking way,” He snorted, releasing a little plume of smoke as he chortled.

Mueller looked guilty when she shot a look at him, there was no denying, and it was the first expression he had ever seen on her face that wasn’t some form of dead-eyed repulsion, “Well—”

That was it. He couldn’t take the look on her face and the tone of her voice paired with the information that King Steve’s reign was ruined because Mandy fucking Mueller, a girl who had him half-convinced she was part-mute, had managed to convince Harrington’s girlfriend to dump him the _one fucking time_ she opened her mouth. It was an unbelievably delicious thought. Girl knew how to put that fucking mouth to work. He threw his head back and barked out a laugh.

“You’re bullshitting me right now!” Billy tossed his arm off of Radner’s shoulders to point at Mandy, stepping forward to stare down at her as he heckled boisterously, wanting to rile her without much cause other than needing to see what other emotions he could get out of her, “You really had me fooled there, Queenie! I really thought you were just some boring stuck-up bitch! Turns out you’ve been busy! Oh, this is just too good!”

Amy smothered her laughter behind her hand at his exclamation, gasping only slightly at the words he used. They both waited for her reply as Mandy Mueller rose her brows, sighing with blatant exasperation as she rolled her eyes.

“Boring and stuck-up, huh?” She parroted the adjectives plainly, and Billy shrugged, fighting down the irritation at the lack of reaction. Oh, so she was just going to roll her fucking eyes at him? He couldn’t get anything out of her, and it was infuriating. She just thought she was too fucking cool.

“Well, you know how it goes. If the shoe fits, Honey,” His voice echoed with an enviable amount of ease, leaving the last half of the phrase unspoken and shrugging his shoulders as he flicked some ash off his cigarette. If she wanted to play that game, he could too. Billy Hargrove was the coolest thing that ever happened to Hawkins, Indiana.

“And when it looks so good on me, why not?” She replied, eyeing him with unhidden amusement. Hooded eyes and long lashes turned right on him, and a nice voice and an easy smile was enough to unravel him. Fucking prissy girls were not his type, he reminded himself. They were fucking trouble, and shitty lays! But Mandy Mueller was totally eye-fucking him, and he kind of just forgot about all that. Or maybe he just decided to stop caring about it. He really couldn’t decide, because he was too busy thinking about how he would like to bend her over and wipe that smirk off her face.

The second he was grinning down at her and readying to reply, whatever amusement that was in her gaze had left, and she was turning away and strutting off, putting her sunglasses over her eyes. The wind blew her hair back from her face as her hips swayed in her stride. _**Goddamn** , those were some jeans,_ his mind lingered on her departing form wistfully. The game was over before he even got to have any fun. Man, what a fucking tease. A sigh escaped him without warrant as he cocked his head to watch her go, and it made him scowl. 

“She’s such a conceited bitch, honestly,” Amy snorted from behind him, and he stuck his cigarette back between his lips as he turned to face her. 

“Hm, whatever,” He hummed as he closed in on her, leaning against his car and smiling at him. He pounced on her and lifted her above his shoulder as she shrieked in delight, “Wanna skip first period? I’ve got something fun in mind.”

* * *

Boys were pigs, and Billy Hargrove, in particular, reeked of bacon. 

Mandy didn’t know how she missed his grossness for the _whole_ week he existed in Hawkins before she became aware of him, but she kind of wished to go back and unlearn his existence. His mind was always a chaotic tangle of agitation and resentment that bled into her subconscious just enough to distract her, and the only clear thoughts she ever got from him whenever he was in her vicinity were perpetually awful. 

His thoughts were manic, and his mind was listless, and his emotions were riotous; every part of the inner workings of Billy Hargrove’s existence were blaring at her. He was a human cyclone packed to the brim with violence and sex, and vivid colors and screeching sounds. He was a total psychopath. And it would have been fine if she had ignored it, but she couldn’t, not when he was always toiling within his head like an evil mastermind. He was still puzzling his new environment, and seeing how far he could push things before he got a push back. So far, he hadn’t got much reaction, and he was bored of it. His mind was starved for any kind of entertainment, anything to divert himself from his own inner machinations, and as of the moment, the only that had really caught his attention was her. 

The rest of the world gave him everything he wanted. The girls were a dime a dozen, and if he wanted one, all he had to do was flutter his lashes and bite his lip. The boys around school weren’t a challenge, either. Only a few could stand up to him, and even then, Billy was already certain they wouldn’t be able to take him down. He had needed something to focus on, and Mandy Mueller proved to be an interesting challenge. She was cold, standoffish, and completely unemotional. He couldn’t just bite his lip, or pick a fight with her to get her attention. None of that meant anything to her, and Billy was doggedly trying to find something to barb her with. He just wanted a reaction. He just wanted to find the one string he could pull on to make her dance.

Mandy knew it would inevitably become a problem, because she was an immovable object, and Billy Hargrove was an unstoppable force. Their clash could only end in mayhem. She knew he couldn’t see that, though. As far as Billy Hargrove was concerned, Mandy Mueller was a sanctimonious bitch who thought she was hot shit. Mandy Mueller was a daddy’s girl who wore her jeans too tight and drove an expensive German car with an engine that was too big for any girl to handle. He had convinced himself that she was stuck-up, materialistic, and played hard to get just for fun. He had committed himself to cracking her, like she was a safe filled to the brim with the richest secrets. He would inevitably be disappointed if he ever found what she was hiding, she knew. What a chump, honestly. 

Hargrove’s thoughts were always calling out to her. If his eyes spotted her, his mind was howling for her. _Mueller, Mueller, Mueller. Mandy Mueller, what can I get out of you? Mandy Mueller, what will you give me? Mandy Mueller, how much can I take? Mandy, won’t you give me something? C’mon, Queenie, won’t you just look twice?_ It was the worst torture, and she had to school herself into staring forward and marching past every time. Because normal people don’t read minds, and outwardly, Billy Hargrove had no tells. Sometimes, his eyes would shutter, just slightly, and other times, his brows would raise just a bit as she walked past. He was so brilliantly deceptive, and she was a little bit envious, if she was being honest. 

Mandy had been waiting for them to collide, but somehow, she hadn’t really expected it to happen the way it had.

“Hey,” A voice called, and she dropped her book as she was lifting it out of her locker. It clattered to the floor, and the person picked it up from the other side of her locker door, a head of gold hair showing itself to confirm her worst assumptions. Billy Hargrove had actually approached her of his own volition, and his conniving ass had just miraculously managed to get her isolated. Prick, her mind hissed. She peeked around the metal door of her locker, eyes wide, to spy him holding her book in his grasp, eyes glinting mischievously at her. 

“Uh,” Mandy was beginning to think people may have been right when they called her stupid. She frowned a little at her lack of response, but she couldn’t help it, she was preoccupied with trying to sort through Hargrove’s shouty head. _Finally_ , it called to her, and she felt a little icky at the thought he’d been trying to get a chance to talk to her. She kind of just wishfully assumed he totally forgot she existed when she wasn’t in his line of sight. In hindsight, it was a stupid assumption, really. Somehow, she articulated a response, even if it did sound a little constipated, “Hi.”

He smiled wider, eyes glowing, and for a second she could see a how he fooled people so well. He was all golden when he smiled like that, and she hated how useful a smile like that could be for a con like him, “Hi.”

He was trying to be cute with her. Awesome. She wasn’t exactly the kind of girl boy’s were playful with, and she didn’t see the appeal, really. She kind of felt mocked. Annoyance stabbed through her being, and her eyes narrowed just a bit. Mandy collected herself, face falling into her neutral expression as his eyes darted over face, seeming to wait for some sort of cue. 

Finally, after a second that stretched on for a fucking millennia between their locked gazes, she snapped, “Well, what is it?”

Annoyance surged through her again, the feeling rising like a tidal wave, and she belatedly realized that it was his. That was not the response he was expecting, for some reason. Like, did he just fucking forget that he was a rude bitch to her, or what? It was actually confusing to her. Was he just planning to float on over to her, smile a little, and make nice? Like, as if. Not on her watch. She was going to make this painful for him. Like pulling teeth. 

Billy Hargrove had a mind that ran circles, and in that moment, she didn’t have to be mind-reader to see him thinking. In a split second, he raised his brows, looking vaguely innocuous, “I know you probably don’t remember me—”

She could even bear for him to finish speaking in that nice-guy tone, so instead, she barreled on right over his voice, tone bland and unimpressed, “I remember you alright.”

“Me? Really?” He was playing off like he was actually flattered to be remembered, while his insides squirmed and churned at the grating tone she took on, “ _You_ actually know _my_ name?”

Fucking prick. Her whole head was fit to burst with the inflamed emotions that filled her. She couldn’t even tell which one of them was feeling what in the moment.

“Radner’s boyfriend, or whatever, right?” For a split second, his face fell, and she relished in it before he was back to his practiced ease. His head growled, his insides rolled, and a storm was beginning to form behind his eyes.

“Yeah, or whatever,” He replied, smirking crookedly and seeming a little redrawn as he handed over her text book finally, “Billy Hargrove, actually.”

“You’re new,” Mandy announced unnecessarily, hand snatching the outstretched book lightning-fast. 

“Yeah, actually,” Hargrove’s mind seemed pleased that she knew things about him, and his irritation eased up just slightly, “My family moved here from California. I thought I heard you moved here, too, not too long ago.”

Uh, what? Mandy blinked at him, mindlessly trying to shove her textbook into her open shoulder bag. She tried once, then twice, missing both times, before she finally yanked her locked gaze away from him and fiddled with her bag distractedly. As she busied herself with shuffling her belongings around in her bag, she retorted unthinkingly, “Uh, is this what you wanted to talk to me about? I’m actually trying to get outta here, y’know? Like, school’s over.”

If Hargrove was offended by her words, he didn’t show it, and his emotions were the same low boiling frustration he was holding before. It was an oddity, truly, because if she had actually liked him, she would’ve felt a bit rude at the way she addressed him. Mandy looked up at him expectantly, and he stared back at her unblinkingly, before finally, he spoke quietly, regardless of how horribly loud his words were to Mandy’s ears, “You’re really pretty. Has anyone ever told you that?”

Billy reached his hand up, fingers barely touching the soft curve of her jaw before she was snatching his hand away from her face, violent intention blatant in her expression. She squeezed his hand in her grasp harder than necessary, tossing it away from her and taking a step back as she slammed her locker door shut between them. It didn’t deter him the way she wanted it to, and he just stood there, brows raised at her response. His mind rang out with mirth. Oh, he liked it. He just wanted a reaction. And finally, she gave him something. That mean expression on her face made him want to grab her face between both hands and devour her. He was such an asshole, and he knew it. Such. A fucking. Asshole. 

“Don’t fucking touch me, Creep,” She warned, feathered brows knitted and eyes narrowed dangerously. 

“Well?” He smiled, looking the picture of innocence, hands hanging limply by his side, “Have they, Queenie?”

Everything about him was so irksome. Billy Hargrove made her head a miserable thing. She glared, eyes fixed on the easy curve of his lips as she couldn’t brave to look into his eyes and see his despicable thoughts lurking behind them. 

“Would they need to?” She questioned in reply, brows pulled together still, her lips curving up just a bit at the corners as her eyes slowly drifted up to meet his gaze, “I do have a mirror, after all.”

He liked her cockiness, his mind was crowing as he grinned in response, head a haze of exhilaration and manic thoughts. He stepped forward, encroaching upon her space, and she stepped back in perfect sync with him. He licked his lips, before cocking his head curiously, eyes squinting at her.

“You’re scared of me,” He accused in a whisper, head swimming in half-baked conclusions. His fidgety fingers twitched where they hung at his side, drumming a beat she couldn’t recognize, and Mandy could have just killed him, honestly. Of all the dumb fucking assumptions a dumb fuck could assume.

“Excuse me?” She asked, a hysterical laugh bubbling from her lips as she stepped up to him, eyeing him levelly, “As if! Get over yourself.”

A fast hand shot out, the drumming stopped, and Mandy found herself with her back against her own locker and her face held in vice, her cheeks squeezed just enough to pucker her lips. She huffed, pursing her lips and trying to yank her head away from Hargrove’s hold, but his hands caged her in, fingers digging into the soft flesh of her face just enough to be uncomfortable. She sighed as she stopped straining her neck in her fight against his grasp, before settling on grabbing at his wrists and trying to yank his hands off, but he still wouldn’t release her.

“Hargrove,” She called out warningly, her voice cracking just a little in her distress. She wriggled a little on spot, feet pacing in place, as his wider form practically enveloped her until all she could see was him. The toe of a single black boot peeked between her Italian leather boots, and she felt so inescapably stifled. Mandy frowned deeply, “If you don’t let me go…”

“See, Princess,” He began, completely ignoring her distress and obvious discomfort as he squeezed her face a little harder before easing off to a lighter hold, eyes contemplative as they roamed over her form, “I do think you look a little scared right now.”

Mandy laughed then, high and loud in her throat, trying not to panic, “Princess, huh? Am I being demoted?”

He smirked in response, a flash of teeth behind a crooked smile, before shrugging his shoulders as he eased off her, grip loosening until his touch was soft, “Sore about it?”

She preferred the tight hold he had on her to the almost intimate way he touched her now, thumb lightly running up the curve of her cheekbone, and her throat clenched as she tried to reign in her frustration. She failed, and it finally mounted in her slapping both his hands away with a harsh swat against the inside of both his wrists. He hissed playfully, feigning more hurt than she actually caused with a chuckle. Her nostrils flared in annoyance, her eyes narrowing.

“Oh, go fuck yourself,” Mandy was seething, lip curled derisively and eyes shining with all kinds of bad ideas as she sneered in his direction, “Pig!”

He grinned at her, brows jumping on his face in his glee as he bit his lip, watching as she stormed away from him as fast as physically possible without looking like she was fleeing. She kept her steps heavy and marched her way out of school, her boots meeting the outside gravel with a crisp crunch.

His mind was bubbling up with excitement. He had finally found the way to get her attention, and his mind kept replaying the moment he pinned her against the wall, one hand splayed across her cheek with his thumb under her chin and the other with his thumb beneath her cheekbone and his fingers threading through her hair, the silver of his rings standing out against her gold curls. Everything about her was soft—the curve of her jaw, the silken strands of her hair, and the velvet feel of her skin. He was surprised, it seemed, pleasantly. Fucking pig.

“Why don’t you do it for me?” He called after her, just before the door slammed shut on her departure, and Mandy Mueller had to force herself not to turn around and kick Billy Hargrove’s ass.

* * *

The game had started. Mandy Mueller did not sign up for it, did not want to even play, and also had the worst sense of sport to ever exist. Apparently, Billy Hargrove did not mind any of that, though. 

When Mandy pulled into the parking lot, engine purring like a jungle cat and tires squealing to a stop, Hargrove was already there right in her line of sight, perched against the trunk of his car with his hands in his pockets. He leaned against his blue abomination, aviators hiding his eyes as he talked with Tommy and another boy from the basketball team that she was nearly positive went by Robbie. Probably. Maybe. Okay, fine, she had no clue. Sports were unimportant, anyway, and boys were even less than that. The moment her engine cut out, all three boys’ heads were facing her direction. It didn’t bode well for her, she already knew. Without much choice, she kept her chin high as she exited the vehicle, tugging her bag out of the passenger seat, and snapping the car door shut louder than necessary. 

Hargrove smirked at her then, lips moving from across the parking lot and voice lower than she could pick up with her ears. The two boys beside him turned their gazes on him as he spoke, lips pulling up in similar fashions, before they looked back towards her, their hushed voices ringing through the dark pit of her mind.  


_“No history, huh?”_  


_“I told you she was stuck-up, man.”_  


_“I’m convinced her pussy’s got teeth.”_  


_“Bitches like that are bad for your health.”_  


_“I think I’d like to break her in and see for myself.”_  


_“I’d tell you you’re wasting your time, but I kinda wanna know if it's true.”_  


_“We’re rooting for you, Hargrove.”_

Ugh! What a mistake! Mandy hated boys. They were just so vile, all the time. She always set herself up for this type of shit. She was a mind-reader, but she didn’t have to _always_ read everyone’s minds. Still, Mandy was nosy for the obvious reasons. Nobody liked to be blindsided. Also, Billy Hargrove was a total psychopath who couldn’t even be trusted with his own private thoughts. So really, she didn’t even feel guilty. On another note, could vaginas even have teeth? She’d have to ponder that further. 

Mandy lifted her sunglasses off her eyes, sliding them up her head to rest of her crown as she exposed her heated glare to the trio. They wore varying expressions, all of which contained the same curiously raised brows. She really didn’t know who they were trying to fool with those wide eyes; nobody in their right mind would ever think those three were anything else but trouble.

With a roll of her eyes and a large, heavy breath, she began her march into school. She made it all of five steps before she heard her name. Honestly.

“Hey, Mueller!” Tommy called out, and she stumbled a bit as she stopped, her momentum running away with her. 

She turned on the spot, looking at him suspiciously, “Morning.”

“I heard you told Princess Wheeler to drop King Steve, that true?” Tommy asked, teeth bared as he chuckled before he popped the gum he was chomping on. Mandy made a face. She couldn’t believe all the shit boys did that tormented her.

“Can we not give them titles? It’s so annoying,” Mandy drawled out, looking around the parking lot for anything or anyone to save her. Hargrove looked particularly amused by her statement. Then she remembered he had taken to calling her Queenie. Blegh, right. God, she hated him so much.

“You avoiding the question?” Tommy popped his gum again, louder this time. Her irritation was growing over it, honestly. Who the fuck chewed gum this early in the morning? Like what the fuck? It was so loud and snappy, and Mandy felt physically repelled by the way the muscle in his jaw jumped every time he bit down.

“You enjoying yourself over here?” Mandy snapped back sarcastically, “Sucking Hargrove’s dick like usual?”

Robbie, or whoever, promptly choked on whatever he was eating, and Tommy made a nasty face, looking ready to say something back, before Hargrove cut in.

“Don’t look too jealous, now,” He smirked, “You’ll get a chance if you’re a good girl.”

Jealous? _Good Girl?_ The words were a kindle to the hate-fire she was building deep down inside her, and Hargrove was going to get burned soon with the way he was feeding it.

“Maybe in your dreams,” She retorted coldly.

“Oh, Queenie, you already do in my dreams,” Hargrove bit back, smile too toothy to be considered anything nice.

“You mean to tell me that you fantasize about me sucking you off? Wow, Hargrove, I never expected it, really,” Mandy called out condescendingly, tone belittling as she rolled her eyes, “I was talking about the good girl comment, obviously. Idiot.”

Hargrove’s mind bloomed with curiosity, her statement had surprised him and even his expression show it, “What?”

“I meant that only in your dreams would I _ever_ be a good girl,” Mandy clarified, speaking slowly as if she was speaking to a child and feeling particularly pleased with the hazy confusion that muddied his thoughts. 

He didn’t expect this turn in her demeanor. Whatever he had her pinned as, he was incredibly off base. Her words had just proved that, and he was still struggling to come to terms with it. The little mosaic he had formed of her in his mind was starting to lose a few shards. Part of his consciousness sat boggled and scratching its head at the development, while the other parts were all shouting a variety of disbelieving curse words. _What the fuck?_ The echo chamber of his mind shouted at her.

Regardless of his inner turmoil, he smiled that blinding golden smile, chuckling at her, “Maybe you don’t have to be good, then.”

Ugh! She wanted to throw her hands to the sky and give up entirely. He was not meant to be cute with her after she blew him off. He was meant to be wounded! Arrogance and ego battling down the sting of rejection!! He wasn’t supposed to be confused and amused, and smile at her!! God, he was so dumb!!!

“Don’t be desperate,” Was all she could manage to come up with after that statement, looking only slightly nauseated by him, “It’s gross.”

All three boys smirked at her then, and she rolled her eyes. Why were boys so good at tormenting girls? Did they just sit around in their little treehouses as kids and contemplate the complexities of inter-gender communications? She loathed them all. Mandy crossed her arms, cocking her hip and staring all of them down blandly.

“So you did,” Tommy supplied bluntly, ready to return to his topic of choice.

“Huh?” Mandy mumbled in a great display of superior intelligence.

“You broke up Steve and Wheeler,” The third boy restated, and Tommy rose his brows at her while Billy cocked his head curiously.

“Well?” Tommy called out, frustration ringing out clearly in his tone, “You gonna fucking answer the question or am I talking to a wall? Honestly!” 

“Well, give me a second! You don’t have to be such a shithead about it!” Mandy retorted, waving her arms a little more than strictly necessary. 

“We’re waiting, Mueller,” Robbie—or maybe it was Ronnie, she was having second thoughts—tapped an invisible watch on his wrist.

“Okay, so, technically,” She began, blurting out the words in a messy jumble. All three boys looked too excited for the chance of gossip. Or maybe they just wanted to know what level of manipulation she was capable of. Either way, they were going to be disappointed.

Tommy apparently couldn’t help but interrupt, rubbing his hands together, “This is gonna be good.”

“I didn’t break them up,” Mandy shrugged, and Tommy looked at her like a deflated balloon. 

Finally, Robbie— _Bobby?_ —spoke up, “Bullshit, Mueller. You and Harrington got in a fight just the week before.”

“Technically?” Hargrove echoed suspiciously, peering over his glasses at her only to be ignored by the group as a whole.

“Awfully convenient,” Tommy announced, voice completely smothering down Billy’s low tone as he rubbed his chin thoughtfully, sounding like a t.v. cop, “Some may even call it _suspect_.”

Mandy audibly scoffed, looking at the two as she shrugged them off, “And what the hell are you gonna do about it if I _am_ lying, huh?”

“Us? Well, nothing,” Tommy shrugged right back, “But y’know, Steve’s tore up about it. He might want to talk to you.”

“Especially because Wheeler disappeared with Byers yesterday, and no one has seen them since,” The third boy inputed helpfully.

“Byers?” That name caught Mandy’s attention, her brows raising imperceptibly, “Well, where’d they go?”

“Who is Byers, again?” Billy finally spoke up from out side the little gossip triangle that had formed between Mandy and the two boys.

Mandy waved a dismissive hand in his direction, “Nobody, don’t worry about it.”

“Jonathan Byers,” Tommy began, totally derailing the conversation in the process, “Is a total sociopath, and Steve’s girlfriend just ran off with him to who knows where.”

“Nah,” Mandy looked over to Hargrove finally, shrugging casually as she explained, “He’s fine. A little weird, but otherwise unimportant. You don’t need to worry about him.”

“Bullshit, Mueller,” Tommy argued, pointing a knowing finger in her face as he looked pointedly to Hargrove, “He took pictures of Steve and Nancy having sex.”

Mandy sighed at his words, “Sure, he did.”

“He did!” Tommy argued.

“Oh, the same way I broke up Steve and Nancy, right?” Mandy shot back sardonically.

Tommy gasped then, grin wide as he began to cackle maniacally, “So, you admit it!”

“No, I just—“ Mandy placed a hand to her forehead, grumbling only slightly, “Why are you yelling at me so early in the morning? Where the hell is Carol, anyway?”

“We had a misunderstanding,” Tommy replied quickly, his tone suddenly very serious. 

Both Billy and Robbie rose their brows from either side of him, staring very pointedly, before Robbie whispered to Mandy indiscreetly, “He called her fat.”

“Aha!” Mandy pointed a derisive finger in Tommy’s face as she mocked, “Good job, Moron!”

“Why’d you have to tell her? You know Mueller can’t be trusted!” Tommy bemoaned, his head knotting up with stress at just the broach of topic.

“Yeah, I’m like the worst person to tell that to. Haven’t you heard I broke up Steve Harrington and Nancy Wheeler?” Mandy agreed wryly, giving a sarcastic smirk and nodding to Tommy, who looked at her with a frown, “Also, I heard you’ve been telling people my pussy has teeth, so I have cause to want you miserable, Asshole. And I’m suddenly seeing some opportunity here.”

All three boys looked thoroughly guilty then, and Hargrove swiveled his head around to look back to her car to check the distance, eyes hidden behind blacked-out shades.

“Who told you that?” Tommy asked, tone firm, “They’re a liar.”

“Damn, didn’t think you’d call your own girlfriend a liar,” Mandy announced, stepping back and looking playfully aghast, “Maybe it _would_ be better if you two were apart.”

“Mueller!” Tommy stepped forward, and Mandy cackled then, jumping back.

“What!?” Mandy shouted equally as loud, eyeing Tommy impishly.

“Mueller, you better be fucking joking!” Tommy shouted, coiling up in preparation to jump at her.

“Ooh, or what?” Mandy mimicked his stance, crouching down to his eye level. 

He pounced, “You’re dead, Mueller!”

Mandy side stepped him, shrieking and giggling as she dodged his grip, running around the parked cars around them, “I’m gonna tell Carol you’re trying to get handsy with me!”

“Mueller!”

“I am! I’m gonna do it! You’re in deep shit today, Buddy!”

“What are you guys doing?” As if shouting her name had summoned her, Carol appeared before them, and Tommy promptly tripped right into Mandy’s back, sending her flying into Hargrove. At the touch of his hands gripping her arms, she felt his befuddled amusement, hearing his humored thoughts rattling around in his cranium. She swatted him off her, following up with shoving Tommy a lot harder than strictly necessary into another car with her shoulder.

“Making fun of Tommy,” Mandy answered drolly, pointing a finger the boy who was staggering back to his feet, “He runs like a bitch, y’know?”

“What the fuck?” Tommy extended his arms in exasperation, “I do not!”

“Fine, you don’t,” Mandy agreed, nodding in the affirmative, “You just act like one.”

Mandy turned to him with a smug smirk, catching his aggravated expression, “Fuck you, Mueller.”

Mandy snorted in reply, feeling too cocky to be stopped at that point, “Ooh, you wish, don’t you? I heard you’re sad and lonely now, Tomcat. No girlfriend in sight.”

“Uh, I’m right here,” Carol announced snootily.

“Am I being led to believe falsehoods in regards to your relationship status, Carol? Is that what you are trying to convey?” Mueller cocked her hips in response, arms crossed and expression politely curious as she took on a reporter’s cadence, pretending to hold a microphone before Carol’s face, “Would you like to make a comment in regards to the rumors that have been circulating?”

Carol sighed, looking too tired to even try to decipher what Mandy was saying, and Mandy picked up on a night of eating ice cream and crying over Audrey Hepburn films fresh in the girl’s memory. Yikes, Mandy almost felt a little bad when she saw all of that.

“Tommy, can we talk?” She finally said, swatting away Mandy’s hands and lifting her sunglasses as she looked to her boyfriend, “I think we should talk.”

Everyone looked to Tommy expectantly, and he merely nodded, looking like he was ready to barf and shit himself simultaneously. Mandy swore she saw a bead of sweat drip down his forehead. He stepped away from the group, suspiciously silent, although his mind was screaming a plethora of different things. _Hargrove’s gonna fucking tear me apart over this! Mueller’s never gonna let this go! Carol might actually kill me, or worse, dump me! This is gonna look so bad!_ Mandy felt a little comfort knowing she wasn’t the only person who lost her shit over the dumb things the school population said about her. 

“Well, go!” Mandy finally shouted as Tommy dragged his feet, “You talk faster than you walk, man!”

He jumped at the booming of her voice, turning to stare spitefully in her direction. Mandy made an ugly face, flipping him off as Carol escorted him away from the group’s prying ears. Once the two were out of sight, Robbie—Johnny, maybe?—announced with not an ounce of decorum, “He’s pussy-whipped.”

Billy snorted at the statement, and Mandy merely rose her brows, replying a little too honestly, “Well, I hate him, so whatever. Let him suffer.”

Billy full on laughed at that, and she cocked her head to look at him from the corner of her eye, gaze dead-eyed and disapproving. They stood there eyeing each other as Robbie sipped on some drink he had, before finally interrupting their staring competition, “What did you and Steve fight over, anyway?”

“He’s a rude bitch,” When Mandy replied, she heard Hargrove speak right over her, seeming to think that statement was towards him.

“He’s a pussy, what else?” Hargrove furrowed his brows, and Mandy rose her brows, feeling a little uncomfortable all of sudden.

“—O-oh, was that question for you?” She stuttered out, looking thoroughly put-off.

Billy rose his brows at her, before turning to the third member of their trio. Robbie merely laughed, “Harrington’s been weird, right? He’s… different.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Hargrove shrugged, looking expectantly to Mandy for an answer.

“Don’t even look at me, Hargrove,” Mandy warned chillingly, placing her hand in a ‘stop’ gesture before his face, “Harrington and I have always disagreed. He’s always trying to boss me around, and I hate it.”

“Well, you always act like a bitch, Mueller,” Robbie accused insolently, and Mandy made an offended gasping sound.

“That’s big talk from a guy whose name I don’t even know! Have we even met?!” Mandy inquired, her tone somewhere between complete bafflement and total offense.

“I sit in front of you in economics!” Robbie exclaimed, “Jamie? Jamie Morrow?!”

Okay, so she was totally off. Robbie was Jamie, apparently. But, it wasn’t like it was absurd for her to not know his name. She hated economics, and she tried to will herself literally anywhere else during the hour she had to endure it. Also, he wasn’t very interesting. He looked like almost every other guy in Hawkins—dark hair, pallid complexion, and a type of face that said, ‘Hey, I’m probably vitamin deficient!’ Talk about being a total nobody.

“Then who the hell is Robbie? I know a Robbie, right?” Mandy muttered to herself, eyes squinted as she stretched her thoughts to try to recall a face to the name.

“Do you mean Bobby Greene? Point guard? You got me mixed up with Bobby?! Seriously?!!” Jamie threw his hands into the air, “He’s like 5’4!!!”

Mandy shrugged helplessly, eyes wide at his explosive anger, “Well, I only ever see you sitting! Sorry!”

“Screw you, Mueller,” Jamie made a crude gesture as he stomped off, taking his food with him.

“Aw, c’mon, don’t be like that, Jamie. Come back!” Mandy called to his back, not wanting to be left alone with Hargrove’s awful mind.

“No!” He shouted back, stalking further away.

Mandy couldn’t believe the audacity of some nameless sporto defying her, “Fine!”

“Yeah, fine!” He echoed the sentiment without turning around.

“You’re not even that much taller than 5’4! You have no basis for being so pissed!” Mandy called out, too mean-spirited to apologize and too petty to shut up at that point.

“Fuck you!” The offended boy simply threw up the middle finger and finally disappeared from her line of sight, leaving Mandy Mueller with only Billy Hargrove for company. She huffed, not needing to even look at Hargrove to know he was staring at her. With a stomp of her right foot, she crossed her arms and looked to him, thoroughly ruffled.

“Shut up, Hargrove,” She commanded unintentionally, too busy hearing his inward crowing at her to even realize he was literally dead-silent and looking at her with only vague interest.

He breathed out a disbelieving laugh, “I didn’t even say anything.”

“I know you were thinking it, though,” Mandy growled, “Shithead.”

“Did you really not know his name? Or was that just a power play?” He smirked over at her, taking off his glasses and slipping them onto the neck of his fitted t-shirt as he pulled out a cigarette. He held the box out for her in silent question, and she waved his hand away from her. He tried grabbing at it mid-air, and she flapped it around instantaneously, getting her hand free without much struggle. Hargrove couldn’t stop the crooked turn of his lips, and Mandy caught sight of it before he could hide it again.

“A power play?” Mandy parroted, crossing her arms and hiding away her hands as her feathered brows rose, “What the fuck does that even mean?”

“Y’know, Alpha dog shit. Asserting your dominance. Psychological manipulation, that kind of thing,” Hargrove continued, speaking around the cigarette between his lips as he gesticulated with his hands, one holding a lighter. When he finished his non-explanation, he flicked the lighter and lit the cigarette, taking a long inhale.

“Asserting my dominance,” Mandy reiterated slowly, looking over to him incredulously, “Psychological manipulation?” 

“Is there an echo? Yes, that’s what I fucking said,” Hargrove rasped out, pulling his cigarette from his lips and flicking some ash off the end. He turned to her pointedly, one hand on his belt.

“Why would I need to do that?” Mandy furrowed her brows, lips pursing in confusion, “What would the purpose be?”

Hargrove only shrugged wordlessly, eyeing her. His mind, however, was shouting at her. _Bullshit,_ it was screaming, not believing her in the slightest. His own deductions of the morning were thus: Mandy Mueller was manipulative. Mandy Mueller was spiteful. Mandy Mueller was an alpha bitch. And as all those thoughts accumulated, at the end of the line was one simple statement: Mandy Mueller was bound to be much more entertaining than he first presumed. 

Well, there went any hope of a peaceful life for Mandy Mueller.

When Billy reached for her that time, she swatted him away before he could even get close. He merely smiled, putting his hand right back into his pocket, leaning back into his car, and looking smooth as hell in the face of rejection. What a douche.

“You really gonna try that again?” Mandy muttered gruffly, shifting on her feet listlessly, debating whether to stomp off or win the silent battle of wills that was taking place. Hargrove looked over at her, tongue darting out to swipe his lower lip as he ogled her.

“Just wanna see if you’re really as cold as everyone says,” Ugh, she could have just gagged, honestly. He shrugged innocently, flicking some ash off his cigarette and leaning his hip against his car as he turned on the spot to bend his upper body towards her, “Can’t exactly blame me, can you?”

“Yes,” Mandy replied dully, “I can.”

The second time he tried it, he reached for her face again, and it pissed her off so much she grabbed his wrist in a vice so tight he actually winced. She stepped into his space, face looming and forbidding like a darkened cloud promising a storm. He didn’t step away, only stared at her unblinkingly, cig dangling from his lips. His mind paused for one glorious moment, and she got visions of her own cerulean eyes framed with thick lashes swimming around in her mind. She looked angry, cat-like, and hungry. Like maybe, she might just do something. The thought didn’t excite him like she thought it might, and she momentarily wondered why.

“You plan on doing something here, Queenie?” He grumbled out from around his cigarette, every part of him seeming to quiet as she set her gaze onto him. She blinked against the assault of sudden images she couldn’t make sense of, loosening her grip.

“Mandy?” Mandy jolted at the sound of her name, dropping Hargrove’s wrist like it was on fire. Amy Radner appeared from around a Branco, smiling brightly when she spotted Billy, “Hey, Billy… Um, what were you two doing, anyway?”

Mandy couldn’t believe the words that left her lips, but they were the following: “Arm wrestling.”

“What?” Amy Radner spat out, sputtering a little at the absurdity of the statement. Mandy looked to Hargrove, who bit his lip, looking too amused by the lie as he crossed his arms and legs, trying to not let his eyes wander to Mandy’s form.

“I won,” He lied quickly, staring pointedly at Radner, and Mandy opened her mouth to call him a liar but the knowing look he shot her suitably quieted her. 

“Of course you did, Babe,” Amy Radner laughed, “Mueller doesn’t even carry her own school books.”

“Hey, I do fine,” Mandy defended half-heartedly, making Radner laugh even harder, “I do!”

Hargrove smirked at her, eyes glancing over to her, and Mandy stomped her foot petulantly, aggravated that even her own lies couldn’t be the way she wanted them to be when he was around. Billy Hargrove was so annoying! He couldn’t keep his hands to himself, and his head couldn’t shut the fuck up for two seconds, and he was always trying to one-up her. It was infuriating!! He grinned even wider at her when Radner cuddled up to him, sliding her body under his arm and eyeing Mandy dangerously.

“So, what were you guys talking about before that?” Amy asked innocuously, and Mandy tried not to roll her eyes at how possessive she was over Hargrove. He was hardly worth it. 

“Well, Jamie Morrow told me that Tommy called Carol fat and they got into a fight, so they might break up. But I don’t know, really, and you didn’t hear that from me,” Mandy shrugged at the end of her statement, tilting her head in a ‘what can you do’ gesture.

“Oh, my god, when?” Amy gasped, looking elated by the news, before looking up at Hargrove’s face and explaining in her own defense, “I’ve always hated them together. They’re miserable.”

“Ugh, totally,” Mandy groaned, agreeing completely, “They’re terrible.”

“Do you think you’re gonna split them up?” Amy asked, expression level and mind genuinely curious.

Mandy couldn’t stop the rush of bafflement that flooded through her, “What?”

“Like you did with Harrington and Wheeler,” Amy expanded further, “Right?”

“I didn’t _really_ break Steve and his nerdy girlfriend apart, Radner,” Mandy explained indignantly.

“Tommy just told me that you said you did,” Amy retorted, jerking her thumb in the direction she just came from.

Mandy looked around, bewildered, “Just now?!”

“Yeah, like five minutes ago,” Amy confirmed, and Mandy was scrambling to do the math. What the fuck!? How’d he move so fucking fast?! Tommy was such a gossip hound!

“How the hell’d he get away from Carol so fast? That crafty son of a bitch,” Mandy muttered to herself, before looking to Hargrove and Radner snootily, “Something has just come up. Goodbye.”

Mueller turned, marching off in a huff, blonde curls bouncing in her wake. Both Radner and Hargrove stood in mutual silence and watched her walk off until she slipped into the crowd and disappeared. Once her form had completely vanished, Amy turned back to Billy, rolling her eyes.

“She’s so fake,” Amy announced, and Hargrove smirked down at her, wringing an arm around her neck and tugging her closer.

“She’s kinda funny, though,” Billy stated, shrugging easily.

“If by funny, you mean a complete dumbass,” Amy scoffed, and Hargrove laughed down at the sour expression on Radner’s face. It was always hilarious to see how petty girls could be.

“Is there a difference?”

* * *

Mandy didn’t know why she had so foolishly assumed that Billy Hargrove would back off. Not a single part of him had ever led her to believe otherwise, and yet, she still held onto the hope he would just fuck off. But he had not. He just got worse.

At her locker, later in the day, he snuck behind her before she could even register his presence, hand reaching out and squeezing the cleft of her ass. She squeaked, swinging at him just as he was out of range, already walking off to his next class, laughing the whole way. And that was it! Hargrove had just cut his life-span in half with that fucking move! Mandy really hoped it was worth it.

The time after was in class, and he tried to snag her hand in passing, but she was already wizened. She smacked his hand away with such ferocity, both their rings clanged loudly in response. Hargrove merely smirked, biting his lip while sitting forward in his desk and propping his head up with a closed fist as he watched her walk past with barely contained amusement, rejected hand hanging limply off the table top.

And it went on. Hargrove wouldn’t stop, and she was losing it. He would sidle up to her as she stood, speaking to someone, trying to find another way to bother her. A slipped hand, a gentle caress, a sharp pinch. He would try to snag her as she walked by, hand reaching out to block her path. The amount of times he grabbed at her when nobody was looking were just too many, and every time she swatted him away, instead of catching the fucking hint, he’d chuckle under his breath and continue on his way to wherever the fuck he existed whenever he wasn’t haunting her. It was infuriating, and he was one more ass-grab away from entire penile destruction. She was fully committed to punching his dick so hard he grew a vagina the next time he fucking tried it.

So, it was a bit of a shame that the next boy, who snagged her by the arm as she was walking through the parking lot at the end of a particularly horrible school-day, was not even Billy Hargrove. She didn’t know how it was possible, given the fact she was accosted right next to his ugly-ass blue Camaro. It was the only time his sudden appearance would have made any fucking sense, but whatever. Mandy was just starting to accept everything in her life was senseless and without reason, anyway.

“Jesus, Mandy!” Steve Harrington choked out, face a painful-looking purple as he hunched in on himself, clutching his groin and clamping his knees together before collapsing into the fetal position. She stood above him, hands on her hips and expression somewhere between disappointment and delight. She hadn’t punched Hargrove, but she did get Harrington. She hadn’t really ever thought about punching Steve in the dick before, and she didn’t know why, given the fact she was still pissed over him spilling the beans over her sleep-walking situation. What an alright turn of events. This could have all gone so much worse. She could have hit some seemingly innocent stranger.

“Holy shit! Mandy Mueller just punched Steve Harrington in the balls!” Someone screamed at the top of their lungs across the parking lot, and the sounds of a crowd gathering picked up around her, people laughing and groaning in equal measure.

She didn’t really feel that bad, so she had no want to be sympathetic, but that didn’t stop her from putting her hands on her knees as she bent over to call out from over Harrington’s writhing form, “Uh, how’s it going down there, Harrington? Ya alright?”

He groaned low in his throat in response, coughing slightly as the muscles in his neck pulsed and tensed.

“What was that?” She couldn’t make out his words, and his head was a mess of stars and the feeling of all his organs shooting up into his throat.

“What,” He wheezed, eyes watery, “The hell?”

“I thought you were that annoying new guy, Hargrove,” She explained disappointedly, shrugging her shoulders and taking off her sunglasses to showcase what little remorse she held, “Sorry, I guess. If I knew it was you, I would have hit you a little softer, Harrington.”

The pure enmity in his eyes was enough to show how completely unhelpful that statement was to him.

“Mueller—” He sputtered, remaining on his side and curled into himself. He didn’t get a chance to finish as Billy and Tommy appeared from behind her, circling around her form like hungry predators to gather Steve’s body and lug him up from the ground. Both boys were grinning, looking too amused to not have seen the whole ordeal. Wonderful. She tried to wave them off, only to be shrugged away as Tommy laughed.

“Don’t be cruel, Mueller,” Tommy crowed, mirth lacing his tone, “You can’t just leave a guy on the ground like that.”

“Nah,” Billy agreed, sporting a grin that looked too toothy to be described as anything other that monstrous, “Not a guy like King Steve.”

“He’s fine,” She tried again, wanting to be rid of them and waving her hands towards the boys as they hooked their arms under his shoulders, “Right, Steve? You’re fine, right?”

“I think I’m gonna hurl,” Harrington announced with a groan, hanging his head pitifully as the two boys on either side of him stood him upright, jostling him just barely with mirroring expressions of bemusement. She frowned, lips pinching into a straight line as she narrowed her eyes.

“Oh, quit being drama—“ She began, only to have Steve lurch forward and expel right in her direction. With a shrill shout, she pivoted out of the line of fire, hands up like she was being held at gun point. A long spray of chummy orange shot past her, and the people that gathered to watch behind her shrieked and scuttled away.

One particularly female voice cried out, “My hair!!”

Tommy and Billy dropped Steve at the same time, recoiling from him as he collapsed onto his hands and knees. Hargrove’s brows pinched together as he eyed Steve’s back.

“Jesus, Steve!” Tommy exclaimed jumping forward once Steve had finished gagging, and Mandy rose her brows as he laughed, patting his back, “You good now, man?” 

Steve wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, nodding and grimacing as he tried to wave off his friend, “Fine. ‘M fine.”

“Well, ain’t that just music to our ears,” Hargrove crooned, smirking down at him, “You gonna stand up anytime soon, or are you planning on taking a nap down there, Harrington?”

Steve turned his head to eye Billy with barely contained distain, and Billy rose his brows down at him in response, cocking his head and smirking easily. His mind coiled into ecstatic little tendrils as he grinned down at Harrington, his pulse picking up as some part of him hoped that Harrington was going to start a fight soon. Mandy couldn’t believe what a blood-thirsty psycho Hargrove was as his mind cajoled in hauntingly clear excitement: _Give me a reason, Harrington, just one._

Harrington grunted in response, stumbling to his feet with a look of supreme irritation on his face. He turned his gaze to Mandy, and she returned it with crossed arms.

“Well, what did you want?” She asked into the lull, deciding to just ignore the look of pure loathing Harrington was leveling her with.

“Really, Mueller?!” Steve shouted, looking both begrudging and bewildered as he gesticulated by spreading his arms out, “How about we talk about what the hell is wrong with you?!”

“What’s wrong with me?!” Mandy shot back just as quickly, barely even letting him finish his statement before she was raising her shrill voice over his, “ _Me?! Really?!_ You’re the one who grabbed me!!”

Steve opened his mouth to reply, only to be cut off by Hargrove as he settled into putting his weight on one leg, looking the picture of smooth and cool, “Really, Steve? You can’t just grab a pretty girl from behind like some kinda sexual predator, man. What’s wrong with you?”

Mandy’s eyes practically shot out of their sockets, sirens wailing off in the recesses of her mind and her blood surging through every part of her like she was jet-fuel powered. She was a tea-kettle, shrieking and boiling-over on the inside. Any iota of reason she had left was abandoning her at warp-fucking-speed. This was it. She had been slowly losing her sanity for years, but Billy fucking Hargrove just snatched away the last bit she had been clinging to. She was going to cry. Or maybe scream. Or maybe just grab him by his hair and rip his big fat head right off his shoulders.

Whatever look she shot at Hargrove must have been horrific, because even he stepped back just slightly, smiling knowingly and looking too ready for her to do something as he rocked on his heels. His mind howled as he licked his lower lip, eyes darting over her form. _C’mon, Queenie,_ his mind goaded, _Gimme something good for fucking once._

He was going to get her foot right up his ass.

“Screw off, man!” Steve Harrington turned onto Hargrove, seeming to snap Mandy out of whatever murder-trance she had entered. Whatever screaming feeling that had started up inside of her had quieted, her blood cooling with each loud thump of her heart. Until, of course, he looked back at her, “And yes, you! Have you finally gone off the deep end, Mueller?!”

“Excuse me?!” She shouted, her temper picking up again with whirling gusts and tornado sirens. Her sanity was already half in the wind, trying to fight against the gale force of her thoughts. It looked like Steve Harrington was going to get his ass thoroughly kicked if he kept it up. 

“Normal people don’t just attack people like that, Mueller!” His retorted, voice raised and raw with discomfort, “Like, someone really needs to send you back to the nut house!”

She knew he couldn’t know. There was just no way. But her mind just… _slipped._ There were flashes of doctors and brightly colored pills, and then the sensation of floating. Her slippers shuffled and her body ached and her head wanted to explode. She could hear the beeping of monitors and the jotting of pens. Just when the image of a long needle staring her down entered her head, she pulled her mind away from it. But more things started raining down on her consciousness, and she couldn’t stop the assault. Pictures of Steve on the floor with her looming above him, shouting and whispers, _I’d bet money Mandy Mueller’s fucked Steve Harrington before,_ roaring engines and loud rock music, Pat Benatar and the smell of hairspray, and Billy Hargrove’s vicious mind just begging her to _do it. Just **do it,** Princess, it’ll be fucking legendary. I bet you really could kick his ass. Ain’t shit going on in this bumfuck town. Make it interesting for me. Make it worth something. Just do it. Show me something. Give me a sign of life. I wanna see you **ruin** King fucking Steve. I bet you could even make that look good. _

The whispers of the crowd picked up at her lack of response, and she blinked away the messy tangle in her mind. She was Mandy Mueller, she reminded herself, and she lived in Hawkins, Indiana now. She was Mandy Mueller, stone cold and still hot as hell. Girls wanted to be her and boys wanted to fuck her. She was _Mandy Mueller_ , and she wasn’t Steve or Carol or Tommy or Amy or Billy fucking Hargrove. Those weren’t her thoughts, and they weren’t her emotions. She just saw them and heard them and felt them, and that wasn’t normal. Mandy Mueller wasn’t normal, but no one else had to even know. No one else would ever know.

Not on her watch, god damn it.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, Steve!” She replied, as if she hadn’t just short-circuited for a brief moment. She was fine. Totally normal. Not even close to losing it. She rose her brows and waved her arms around prissily, “I mean, like, I didn’t even hit you that hard!”

“Unbelievable!” He announced, disbelief lacing his tone as he gestured the vomit on the ground with an open palm, “You’re a lunatic, Mueller!”

“At least I’m not some pussy who just got dumped for Jonathan Byers!” Mandy retorted snippily, turning around and beginning to cut through the crowd as fast as she could without running. She needed an exit, anything to get her away from the situation. Her mind was still reeling. The cold echo of metal, the drip of an IV, the beep of the monitors. They all sounded in her mind, and she wished they would just shut up already. She was done with all of that. She was out. She wasn’t crazy anymore. She was free of that awful place now.

“Are you really just gonna walk away after all of that?! _Seriously?!_ Screw you, man!” Steve shouted to her back, and Mandy didn’t give pause, continuing to weave through the crowd.

She left with a parting, “Whatever, Dick Wick!”

The crowd laughed in response, and some of her nerves eased. People jostled her as she exited the large throng of teens, whooping with amusement at the scene she had caused.

“Ha! That was classic, Mueller!”

“Good on you, Mandy!”

“Damn, Mueller, remind me not to piss you off!”

“Nice one, Queenie!”

Boys were all fucking trouble, honestly.


	3. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

The dark stretched on, and she stared into the abyss unblinkingly, waiting for the storm to show itself. Mandy suspected it would be back, and she couldn’t hear anything else echoing in the vastness surrounding her, so she assumed it was somewhere hiding in the shadows away from her gaze. She didn’t run this time, just stood and crossed her arms, waiting patiently. She could feel her energy picking up with each drum of her pulse, a prickling sensation enveloping her as she readied herself for a confrontation.

“Hello,” A voice spoke from behind her, and Mandy spun around in surprise, a spray of water flying up with her movement. Her gaze landed on a girl before her, brown hair short and curly, with longing watery eyes. The girl’s presence crashed down on her senses, her mind flashing with pictures of stark walls and helplessness, of wood and flannel and _home_ , and then a boy with kind eyes and the cold horrible loneliness that followed. She felt like her insides could echo with how empty she felt—like her chest could collapse and her lungs would deflate with all the grace of a punctured balloon. 

And then, those images changed into something more familiar. Tall concrete buildings and honking cars. Chinese takeout and ice cream after school. Her first pair of diamond earrings and her first drag off a cigarette, and then the burning of her whole world. Voices in her head and tests, and itchy cotton dresses and over-washed robes. Should have lied, she told herself, she’d never tell the truth again. The world couldn’t be trusted. The pills that made her head scream, and the pills that made her sleep forever, and the pills that made her float away. Then the gleam of the needle, the whine of the motor, and the prying open of her eyes. No. She couldn’t bare to see anymore. No. She didn’t want to look. No, please, it’s going to hurt—

“Stop it!” She screamed finally, hands flying to her face, just to make sure it wasn’t real, “I told you no!”

The girl blinked, eyes sad as she whispered woefully, “I’m sorry, Sister.”

Mandy’s mind saw red, all her memories rising like a tidal wave in her indignation. She tried to stop it, hands clutching the sides of her head as she squeezed her eyes shut to try to end the assault of color in the back of her eyelids. The apology rang loudly over images of her standing from an operating chair, a patch over her eye and a tube in her arm. She was shiny and new. Gone were the voices, she lied days later. Her life was saved. She thanked the men who violated her mind in the worst way as she was led from the hospital. She was such a diabolically good liar. She hated them all, and they didn’t even know how much. She looked to her mother and father, and silently promised bad things for the future. One day, her thoughts whispered, you’ll get yours. And until then, she’d make them suffer. She’d make them work. She’d spend their money and slam their doors and scream until their ears bled. She’d raise hell. She’d make them wish they kept her crazy. Because now she was angry, and nothing could stop her from getting what she wanted. 

“Don’t call me that,” Mandy complained as she blinked away the memories, but the apology lingered still. It had been years, and it was the first time she heard it. Nobody had bothered to say it. To look at her and ask for forgiveness—to just address it like it wasn’t a secret and admit it was a horrible mark on her soul that she hadn’t needed to suffer at all. She didn’t know how much she had wanted to hear those words until they were out. It felt like someone understood, or cared, or _something_. It felt like the world had been filled with radio silence, and suddenly, a signal had been picked up. She wasn’t so alone after all. There was someone out there just like her. Maybe she was going to be okay. Tears slipped from her eyes unbidden. Somewhere deep inside her, the last remnants of her heart that had survived the cruelty of the world lit up like fireflies against a dark night sky. Her lips trembled around her next words, “My name is Mandy.”

“Mandy,” The girl parroted, before pointing to herself, “Eleven.”

“Eleven?” Mandy asked, wiping her face with the back of her hand as she sniffed, “What kind of fucking name is that?”

“Fucking?” Eleven mimicked in obvious questioning, brows pulled together and eyes squinty, and Mandy laughed loudly at her confused look, “What is fucking?”

“What the hell? Are you an actual alien? Or just foreign?” Mandy chuckled, stepping closer to the girl, “How have you really never heard a curse word before? Seems unlikely. How old are you anyway?”

Eleven smiled slightly as she heard the soft sound of levity leave Mandy’s chest, brows still slightly pinched in confusion. She tried again, “Alien?”

“Like, a martian,” Mandy explained, rolling her wrist in a lazy wave, hoping the girl would move on and try to answer some of her other questions.

“A martian?” The younger girl echoed cluelessly.

Mandy sighed then, putting her hands on her hips as her shoulders sagged, “Y’know, like a person from Mars?”

“Mars?” The younger girl repeated, her expression seeming to settle into displeasure at the realization that they were surely sliding into a rabbit hole of explanations that would just end up confusing her further.

“It’s another planet,” Mandy expanded, looking more bewildered by the minute as she noticed the girl’s genuine confusion singing in her mind, “We live on a planet called Earth. Mars is another place, very far away from us.”

“Like where you’re from,” Eleven announced, looking up at her for confirmation, seeming to think she had the concept of Mars pegged then. This was why Mandy hated children and idiots, they had to be taught things. It was awful, and she really didn’t have the patience.

“Well,” Mandy began, rolling her eyes without much heart, “Where I’m from is not as far as Mars, Honey.”

“Honey?” Eleven mimicked, and Mandy laughed again, but in exasperation.

“Something sweet to eat,” She elucidated, “It’s an endearment—a name for people you like, or are, like, close with or whatever.”

“You like me?” She asked, brows raising and lips tilting up slightly at the corners. At the unimpressed look Mandy shot her, Eleven nodded, continuing on, “Or whatever?”

“Sure, or whatever,” Mandy answered, nodding begrudgingly as she crossed her arms over her stomach. Her pink pajamas weren’t much to fight against the draft she was feeling, and she looked around curiously to try and spot some source of wind.

“You left your window open,” Eleven announced, interrupting Mandy’s inner thoughts and pointing over her shoulder. She peeked back to see her own bedroom, french silk curtains billowing from an open window and her canopy rustling above her prone form on her bed. It was an odd thing to see herself out of her own body, and she rubbed her eyes as she approached herself, looking down at her person with disorientation. 

“Holy shit,” Mandy whispered, looking back at Eleven, who stared up at her with wide eyes, “This is me.”

“Yes,” Eleven confirmed, nodding her head and looking down at her sleeping form as well.

“This is…” Mandy couldn’t even find the words. She looked like a living portrait, breathing slowly and face at peace, and she couldn’t decide if she liked that or not. She appeared… soft and dreamy. She reached out to touch, just to solidify what she was seeing was real, and the moment her fingers met her exposed skin, she gasped, arching up off the bed. 

Mandy felt around her own body at the realization she just woke from a dream, her vision blurry and her body heavy with sleep. It was still the middle of the night and she groaned, her alarm clock showcasing a blaring red number hours away from the time she was meant to get up. Well, shit. She rubbed at her eyes and flopped back onto the mattress with a bounce. She sighed, trying to calm herself as she settled herself back into bed, eyes slipping closed as she wrapped herself in a blanket. And then they shot back open as she remembered her dream.

She left her window open.

She sat back up and peeked around her canopy, spotting her window open and her curtains billowing with the chilly autumn winds. So, that was a little bit freaky, she thought. Even if she could read minds and do all other kinds of impossible things, there was always a part of her that wanted to deny the obviously abnormal aspects of her life. And this was a newer one she hadn’t quite figured out yet. She stood from bed, flinging her comforter off her with a sharp ‘whap!’ and striding to the open window. Pausing, Mandy held her hand right above the window pane, before finally closing it. She stared at it for a moment, contemplating the likelihood that Eleven was a personality her mind decided to create as a way to cope with shit she refused to deal with in her waking life. Ugh, maybe, she thought in a sudden moment of dangerous self-doubt, she had been crazy all along.

Mandy ran a hand through her hair, standing straight and watching the quiet landscape outside for a moment, before turning around to make her way towards her bed. One step into her voyage, she spotted her. The little alien girl from her dream. Eleven. She screamed, jolting and collapsing on the floor as the girl’s eyes widened in equal surprise.

“No, wait!” Eleven tried to placate her, and Mandy screamed even louder when she realized she could hear her voice.

Her bedroom door flung open, and her mother flew in, curlers in hair and silk robe wrapped around her form. Mandy pried her eyes away from Eleven’s startled gaze. Her mom walked right by the strange young girl, before kneeling beside Mandy and grabbing her around the shoulders.

“Mandy!” Her mother shouted, shaking her shoulders, “Honey, what’s wrong?!”

Mandy gaped, looking between her mother and the girl, and Eleven gasped at her, whispering quietly, “Can you really see me?”

“I—” Mandy stammered, unable to form any coherent thought, “I-I-I—“

She looked back to her mother, heaving a rasping breath to calm herself as she settled her gaze on her mother’s worried face. There was no way she would be telling her mother about invisible girls who talked to her in her dreams. That would be absolutely insane. It was true, but still, it was fucking insane. Instead, she opted for the easiest lie that came to her, “I saw a spider, Mom!”

Her mother huffed a laugh out as her shoulders sagged in relief, “Mandy! You scared the bejeezus out of me! I thought we had a burglar! Oh, my god—”

Her mother clutched her chest and laughed breathily as Eleven and Mandy eyed each other silently on opposite sides of the room. Mandy was not done screaming internally. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck! What in the fuck—!? She was definitely losing it. Self-doubt turned into positively sure she was certifiably insane. Mandy turned her wide-eyed stare onto her mother’s face as the older woman continued to ramble, staring so strenuously, she felt like her eyes might shoot out of her skull. She was not going to look at Eleven ever again. No way. She was going to pretend she wasn’t even there. Her mom couldn’t see her, and neither could she.

“C’mon, Honey,” Her mom smiled, patting her shoulder, “Let’s get you back in bed, it’s a school day tomorrow.”

“Okay,” She agreed hollowly, allowing her mother to escort her back to her mattress, Eleven pacing around their forms as they shuffled across the room, cocking her head and watching them like a curious animal. Mandy refused to acknowledge her and locked her eyes ahead of her unblinkingly. 

After she was settled, and her mother slowly shut her bedroom door, she peeked a glance at the young girl still lingering in her room, who gasped as they locked eyes, stepping forward quickly and reaching her hand out. Mandy panicked, throwing her covers over her head and turning her back as she curled in on herself.

“You _can_ see me,” The young girl whispered into the darkness, and even with no answer, she plowed on, voice a firm and determined rasp, “I know you can.”

Eleven didn’t say anything after, and Mandy fell asleep to the feeling of being watched.

* * *

 

The feeling would not go away, and Mandy Mueller kind of felt like she was totally losing it. She couldn’t rid her self of the sensations of phantom cobwebs hanging around her consciousness, just trying to snag at her when she made the wrong move. She whipped her head around as she got out of her car, hoping to catch whatever she felt was looming over shoulder. She wanted to be able to finally be able to shout, ‘aha!’ and be done with the whole awful feeling, but nothing was there, not even that dream girl, Eleven. She hadn’t seen her in the morning, but it was almost like she could feel her, somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind where her thoughts barely explored. It was unsettling, to say the very least. She wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad thing that she couldn’t see her anymore.

Mandy spun back around and snapped her car door shut, locking it and hearing the meep of her car alarm before striding towards the school building. She was actually happy to be in school for once, maybe the torture she endured inside the terrible facility would distract her from her own convoluted mind. Not likely, but a girl could dream.

“Mandy, hey!” She heard a female voice call as she wove her way around Billy Hargrove’s strategically parked car. God, she hated him so much. As if it wasn’t enough to be seeing ghosts in her own head, Hargrove had to be a living, breathing phantom who refused to take a hint. It was barely even 8am and she could feel a headache coming on. Jesus Christ.

Mandy didn’t look up as continued trudging toward the school building, replying with a grumpy, “Morning, Radner.”

“Chapman, actually,” The girl corrected peppily, voice ringing like wind chimes, “Becky Chapman, remember?”

_Uh, what?_ Someone please cue the record scratch. Mandy paused in her death-march, putting her paranoia on the back burner for a moment as she devoted her thoughts to some high school gossip, fresh off the mill. She backed up a few steps, shifting her blackout shades further down the bridge of her nose to stare into the open passenger window of Hargrove’s blue monster. Sure enough, the bright amber eyes of Becky Chapman shone up at her, and she made a noise of confusion without really meaning to. She could have sworn that Amy Radner had gone home with Hargrove just last Friday, and now Becky Chapman was showing up to school with him on a Monday. Ugh, her head was fast approaching being over-cooked. How did people get so much done? She spent most of her time just thinking about the stuff she needed to do, and it was honestly startling the amount of productivity Billy Hargrove was exhibiting. 

“ _Uuhhmmm_ ,” Whatever words she had been trying to form just decided to slip back into her lips, her mouth closing as she hummed in thought. Finally, Mandy spoke something relatively coherent, “Yeah, I remember. You look nice today, Honey, I already told you I love that jacket, right?”

Mandy didn’t know what else she was supposed to say to the implications of the entire situation, and the aforementioned girl hadn’t stopped wearing that jacket since the day she complimented it, so it ended up being the only thing that pulled at her thoughts in the moment. She was luckily saved from any other embarrassing sounds escaping her when Hargrove stepped out of his car, jean jacket in hand and sleeveless flannel unbuttoned to showcase his chest and muscular arms. His smarmy expression ate at her pride, knowing that he took amusement in her undisguised bewilderment.

“Well, aren’t you just extra sweet today, Queenie,” He crooned, looking particularly infuriating as he shrugged into his jacket and unabashedly eyed her from over the hood of his car, “You must be feeling peachy knowing Harrington spent the whole weekend icing his balls, huh?”

She made an ugly face at him, sneering and curling her lip as she readied her reply, only to be swatted aside with the passenger door as Becky hustled out of the car. Mandy stumbled away, turning to look at Becky with the utmost offense, “Um, excuse me! I’m standing here! You don’t got eyes all of a sudden, Rebecca?!”

Becky stepped out of the car, brows raised and looking the picture of innocence, which all would have been good and dandy, if it weren’t for the fact that Mandy could see the haze of possessive jealousy lingering behind her eyes. Mandy Mueller tried too hard. Mandy Mueller wore her pants too tight. Mandy Mueller was a tease. Mandy Mueller thought she was hot shit. Mandy Mueller was a threat. Mandy Mueller had to be gotten rid of. _For good._ It all felt very insidious. Like, was she planning to kill her? Over Billy Hargrove? Really!? She didn’t want to be killed over a boy like Hargrove! That was so defaming to her public persona! Mandy rose her brows, stepping away as Becky slammed the door shut just a bit too loudly.

“Hey, hey,” Hargrove distractedly waved his hand in their direction in a negative motion, fresh cig between his pointer and middle finger, “Don’t fucking slam my doors.”

Well, then!! Mandy was indignant. She was just struck, and he wanted to talk about his car doors! Billy Hargrove was such a conceited shithead, honestly! She wished he would just get bricked. She stomped her foot when her irritation became too much, turning to Becky with barely contained animosity. This day was going to suck so fucking much, and it hadn’t even begun yet!

“Yeah, Chapman!” Mandy agreed more zealously than intended, gesturing somewhat animatedly, “Were you raised in a barn, ya’ animal?!”

Becky pinched her brows together, her mind lingering on a singular word: Bitch. 

“I grew up on a farm, Mandy,” The hazel eyed girl explained drolly, eyes glinting murderously. Seemed to Mandy that Becky Chapman felt very defensive of her roots. Almost like, _maybe_ , she was, perhaps, a little _embarrassed._ What a thought. It kind of gave Mandy some ideas for Becky’s immediate future. Regardless of how much Mandy had claimed to like the girl, Becky really needed reminding who the hell she was messing with. 

“Ew, gross,” Mandy whispered back, recoiling and placing a sympathetic look on her face, “Don’t tell people that, Honey. You can’t trust just anyone with that kind of information.”

Mandy placed her hand on Becky’s shoulder, patting it encouragingly and nodding with finality, before turning to leave. Mid stride away, she spotted Eleven staring her down with intense coal eyes. Mandy shrieked without pause, her lungs releasing a seemingly unending stream of air as she stumbled back into Becky, turning around to try to hide her face from the invisible girl.

“Mueller, what the hell?!” Becky exclaimed, confusion lacing her words, and Mandy placed her hands on her mouth as she realized the sound she just made. She could see the shiny bemused curiosity beaming inside Hargrove’s mind from the corner of her vision, and she unthinkingly peeked at his expression, only to find his brows arched, cigarette hanging from his lips wordlessly. His brows very slightly jumped as they locked eyes for a moment.

She thought up a lie, quick, “Did you not see that huge bug fly right in my face?! Oh, my God! I swear, I saw my young life flash before my eyes!”

“No!” Becky exclaimed, looking around their heads, swatting around her head unwittingly, “Oh, my God! Where is it?!”

Becky Chapman was an idiot, thankfully, but Hargrove’s eyes narrowed just slightly at her before his eyes drifted to the location she had seen Eleven, eyes sweeping over the girl’s location and not seeming to spot anything out of the normal. Oh, God! Her mind was inconsolable on the inside. She was sure he was onto her. The jig was up. Her cover blown. She was about to be ousted as a basket case. It was all so tragic. She could just kill that little girl in her head. 

“Are you two pussycats that scared of a bug, really?” Hargrove inquired without even bothering to hide his judgmental tone. Mandy squinted very slightly at him, only masking her irritation at his words at the last minute, and Becky simply cocked her hip.

“Y’know,” Becky began, looking to him pointedly, “I heard this story once that a bug got caught in a girl’s hair, and then managed to find its way into her ears and lay eggs.”

Okay, that made Mandy a little queasy. She _really_ could have done without that information. It was shaping up to be a difficult day, all around. Mandy could use a nap already.

“That’s fucking disgusting,” Billy announced dryly, looking put off for a moment as he flicked away his barely-smoked cigarette with a grimace.

Mandy looked to Becky with a mirroring look of subtle repulsion as she inquired priggishly, “Did it happen at your farm?”

Hargrove choked on a laugh after she spoke, snapping his head away the two girl quickly to hide his face as he coughed and cleared his throat. Becky frowned at her, eyes unimpressed as she clutched her textbooks to her chest even tighter, and Mandy shrugged haplessly, giving a small smile in return.

“Well, did it? You can tell me. I won’t tell anyone, promise.”

* * *

 

“You’re ignoring me,” Eleven announced, marching after her as she entered the girls’ bathroom in the middle of second period. Mandy stomped through the room, footsteps echoing on the tile as she swung every stall open to make sure nobody was going to witness what would surely look like her talking to herself. She locked the room door from the inside, hoarding what little privacy was allotted. 

“All right, you little shit,” Mandy finally turned on her, voice a low hiss as her frustration mounted and she was readying to cut into her verbally. The girl had been following her all morning, standing in the corner of every room she entered and watching everything like it was the most fascinating thing she had ever seen. It was horrifying, and also creepy! And Mandy did not like it at all!!

“So,” Eleven stuck her chin up at her, eyeing her heatedly, “You _can_ see me! You’ve just been lying!”

“No one else can see you, you little freak!” Mandy threw arms out around her, “I will be sent to an asylum if I start talking to myself again! You understand me? And I will not be going back, not ever!! So, yeah, I’ve been ignoring you! I can’t exactly be entertaining the ghost girl in my head in front of everyone, can I?! I’d be going kamikaze on myself!!”

The younger girl frowned at her words, “They could send you…?”

“Yes,” Mandy sighed exasperatedly as she rubbed her temples, knowing the girl had some form of mind-fuck abilities, and that she had already seen most of her memories. 

“To the bad place?” Eleven expanded, seeming to be contemplating something, “You could go back?”

Mandy nodded fiercely, bending slightly to eye the shorter girl evenly, “Yes! And I’d never get back out, got it? I’d be in there for good. Nobody would ever come back for me. So I _have_ to ignore you, Honey, I have to. I don’t have any other choice.”

“I’d come back for you,” Eleven insisted passionately, her eyes burning as she stared up at Mandy, “I wouldn’t let them keep you.”

The words would have been more endearing if she wasn’t so annoyed in the moment. Mandy sighed, scrubbing a hand through her hair and messing up an already lackluster ponytail, “You wouldn’t have a choice.” 

Eleven shrunk a little under Mandy’s words, eyes darting around as she tried to make sense of the information. Finally, she announced in a sudden turn of topic, “No one ever sees me when I’m like this. Only you. Why?”

“I don’t know,” Mandy replied tiredly, “I’m still not fully convinced you’re even real.”

“Why?” The younger girl questioned.

“No one can see you,” Mandy explained.

“I know,” Came the younger girl’s unimpressed reply, “I just said that.”

“Yeah, Genius. If no one else can see you, how the hell do I know I’m not just going crazy and talking to a figment of my imagination?” She retorted snippily, continuing on before Eleven could even attempt to answer her impossible conundrum, “Yeah, exactly my point!”

Eleven furrowed her brows, pursing her lips as she too thought on that. Finally, Eleven said, “You were never crazy, though. I can’t be a fig-month if you’re not crazy.”

“A figment,” Mandy repeated for clarification, watching as the girl worked her lips quietly to form the word in her head, “And what kind of logic are you working with over there, Kid?”

“You’re not crazy,” Eleven reaffirmed, eyes smoldering in her intensity to the point that Mandy just rolled her eyes at the drama of it all, “You’re not. You’re special, it’s different. You’re like me, I know it.”

Finally, Mandy’s intrigue piqued. This was it. Her answer. This girl was either a manifestation of her psychosis, or there was something else going on that would make sense of her existence. 

“How are you special?” Mandy crossed her arms, eyes narrowing as she stepped closer to get a better look at the smaller girl, “How are we similar?”

“Our heads,” She explained, eyes wide as she pointed to the side of her cranium with a single index finger, “Are different.”

Mandy paced in place at the restless feeling building up inside her, “How? What can you do?”

“I’m a mage,” Eleven answered, and all of Mandy’s hope flew into the fucking wind as she groaned.

“You’re magic,” Mandy called out, voice laced with painfully apparent incredulity as it echoed around them, “You can do magic in your fucking head, that’s what you’re saying to me?”

“Magic?” Eleven parroted cluelessly, and Mandy collapsed onto the floor in a ball of limbs as she cradled her face and shoved her head between her knees.

“Oh, my fucking _goooood,_ ” Mandy groaned, shaking her head and squeezing her eyes shut until she saw psychedelic colors behind her eyelids, “Oh, my actual fucking God! Even my delusions are fucking stupid!”

“Stupid?” Eleven called out indignantly, balling her fists, “Stupid?! Who is stupid?!”

Eleven cocked her head, neck twitching and hair flying off her face for a moment before all the faucets squeaked on, all doors slamming simultaneously in the room, the lights flickering over head. Mandy’s head shot up, eyes wide at the orchestrated chaos, and she clambered up to her knees to peek around her at all the commotion. She whipped her head around in bewilderment, crawling in a full circle, before finally setting her gaze one the young girl before her wearing a triumphant smirk.

“You’re—” Mandy’s mind couldn’t quite comprehend what she was looking at, and her mouth fumbled around the concept of language as she watched everything move of its own accord, “You can—with your mind? All of this? Really?”

The doorknob rocked, twisting and jiggling, before a thunderous knocking came from the locked door on the end of the room, interrupting whatever reply the young girl was going to give. Mandy jumped to her feet like a criminal on the run when she heard the distinct chiming of keys. One by one, looking like pages on a book rustling in a slight breeze, the stall doors stilled, creaking slowly to a stop.

“Hey! What are you girls doing in there?!” A deep masculine voice sounded from the door, and Mandy recognized the voice of the boys’ basketball coach. She hated him, but not as much as he hated her. It was a recipe for disaster if he found her to be the cause of all the racket.

“Fuck!” Mandy squeaked in panic, eyes darting around the room, before she spotted a high window. She was going to escape out of that fucking window, by god! Mandy sprinted to the last stall, swinging it open and tromping inside, stepping onto the toilet and trying to swing her leg out of the window. Hopping on one leg, she couldn’t get enough height, and quickly hissed to Eleven.

“Help me out here, Magic Pants!!” Eleven appeared in the stall entrance, smiling in amusement at the position Mandy was in, a single boot shoved out a window and the rest of her body refusing to go with it. 

“Magic Pants?” Eleven echoed, brows raised, and Mandy growled at her.

“Help me first, and the— _EEK!!_ ” Mandy was launched out of the window like a flying saucer, and she landed ass-first into a bush that was more thorns than leaves. Honestly, that was such a perfect metaphor for her life, she didn’t know how she could even be surprised. Just as her head emerged from the shrubbery, she heard the sound of the stall doors clanging open as the coach swarmed the restroom. Well, that was a close one. Mandy imagined it would be difficult explaining some ghost girl who just decided to poltergeist the bathroom while she was in there. 

“Magic Pants?” Eleven questioned again, reappearing before her magically.

“Magic,” Mandy whispered, ducking a little to hide her moving lips, “Like, the act of doing the seemingly impossible. And pants, obviously, because you are wearing them. You know what pants are, right?”

Eleven nodded, before peering over her shoulder to spot a group of boys that stopped along their path around the track as they ran laps, all sporting the same gym clothes. Mandy looked over as well, spotting all the people she was currently loathing. Tommy, Steve, Billy, and Jamie. Awesome, and all of them had her shitlisted in one way or another. They must have heard her scream. Or maybe just the act of falling out of a window and into a bush was attention catching enough. Whatever.

“Mueller,” Steve visibly winced at just the sound of her name, and Billy grinned over at him, not wanting to let him think it went unnoticed.

“No,” Mandy blurted out, not even wanting to hear whatever Tommy was going to say after that.

“Mueller!” Tommy shouted, laughing at her as she stood up, her cashmere sweater catching on a particularly willful thorn. She battled for her sleeve for a moment, before trudging out of the shrubbery to reveal all her leafy glory, the threads on her arm pulled loose, “What the hell are you doing?!”

“I don’t know! Don’t even talk to me!” Mandy whined, tossing her head back, a few leaves fluttering out of her hair.

“You just flew like twenty feet! We all saw it!” Jamie announced, and Mandy peered back at the window she plummeted out of.

“Oh, so you expect me to believe that you were all here, just hanging out, and you saw me fall from that window? I call bullshit, Robbie!” Mandy exclaimed, suddenly indignant about all the unwanted attention. Couldn’t a girl have a mental breakdown in peace? Like, ugh! Boys sucked!!

“Jamie,” He corrected, a single index finger raised.

“I literally have never fucking cared less!!” Mandy screeched back, baring her teeth and looking particularly crazy with the obscene amount of foliage in her hair.

“I was just here smoking,” Hargrove inputed unhelpfully, looking actually innocent for once in his entire life of truancy as he gestured to his cigarette with his left hand while his right hand elevated it as proof, “This is the only spot the coach can’t see from the bleachers.”

“Are you alright, Mueller?” Steve asked, standing a safe distance away from her, “We thought we heard people fighting or something…”

“Wanna know how its all going for me, Harrington? Oh, okay, let me tell you,” Mandy shouted, gesticulating wildly as she locked her gaze on Steve, “I would literally rather be fucking dead right now. Shit’s fucked six ways to Sunday, I’ll tell you that for free!”

“I think she’s concussed,” Somebody whispered, and Mandy huffed out a very frustrated growl.

“I’m fine! Everything’s fine!” Eleven nodded along with her passionate exclamation, and Mandy found herself flapping her hands dismissively in the invisible girl’s direction, “Okay, yeah, stop.”

“What about everything being fucked? I thought I heard something about that?” Hargrove questioned, waving a half-smoked cigarette around lackadaisically. 

“Fucked is the way it is now, so,” Mandy placed her hands on her hips, wheezing a little, and out of breath for some unexplainable reason, “It’s fine. I think I need to lay down, though. Maybe take a nap.”

“Yeah, alright, Mueller, I’m taking you to the nurse’s office, c’mon,” Steve waved his arm around, commanding dully.

“Fuck off, Steve,” Mandy dismissed discourteously, “You’re not gonna do shit.”

Steve made a offended sound, gaping, “Alright, you’re definitely going now!”

“The fuck I am, Harrington! I’ll fight you!” Mandy pointed a warning finger in Steve’s direction, hissing savagely, “You planning on having kids in the future? I can change that.”

Steve shrunk a little at her words, and Tommy and Hargrove ooh’d, Jamie choking down a laugh from behind his hand. Mandy straightened herself out, trying to pat down her clothing in hopes to get rid of any stray leaves and twigs. When she felt like she didn’t look like she fell into a bush, she began tromping off, her hands balled into fists. All four boys groaned as she departed.

“Aren’t you gonna tell us what the hell you were doing?”

“C’mon, Mueller, you’re killing us!”

“Who was fighting in the bathroom?”

“You have a branch in your ponytail, Idiot!” 

At Hargrove’s exclamation, Mandy ran a hand into her hair to check. There was, in fact, a huge stick that stuck out of both sides of her ponytail. Hargrove was such a useless tool. She tried to yank the stick from her hair to no avail. Her hair just kept snagging when she tugged, making her wince. She tried turning to get a better look at the situation, just to spin herself in a circle. Now she was looking like a helpless idiot over a fucking stick, of all things, and it was pissing her off.

She threw her head back and balled up her fists, releasing a frustrated groan before she began a shameful walk back to the group, “Well, shit! One of you losers get this thing out of my hair!”

“Uh-uh,” Tommy shook a finger, and Mandy pouted miserably at him, “Explain first.”

“I jumped from that window,” Mandy announced insolently, pointing up at in for emphasis.

“Why?” Hargrove asked, eyebrows drawn together as he rocked forward on his feet, cigarette between his lips and hands on his hips.

“I thought it was a good idea at the time, honestly,” Mandy answered, looking rather displeased with herself, “I wouldn’t have done it if I knew you douchebags were out here, though.”

“Yeah, no dice, Sweetheart,” Tommy proclaimed, “I want the real story. What the fuck was all the commotion in the bathroom?”

“Uhm,” Mandy hummed in thought for a moment, trying to think up a plausible story, “Well, I went to the bathroom to pee, right?”

“Okay, we didn’t need to know all that,” Steve stated dryly.

“What the hell do you do in the bathroom, Harrington? Powder your nose?” Hargrove’s voice cut in, eyes darting to Steve’s disgusted face.

“So I was in the stall,” Mandy continued on, her story knitting itself together quickly, “And I’m minding my own business, right?”

“As one does,” Jamie nodded, “Go on.”

“And all of a sudden, I hear all these people come in. And they’re all yelling at each other! Like totally going nuts, right? And well, I’m not ashamed to admit I was a little scared. I mean, I was totally caught with my pants down, right?! Like what the hell?” Mandy barreled on, waving her arms around and trying not to meet anyone’s eyes as she lied.

“So you just jumped out of the window?” Hargrove inquired doubtfully, seeming to be the only person finding a flaw in the story. She peered up at him, trying to look innocent. She wasn’t sure how well it was working, his mind was more preoccupied with sexualizing her at the moment, and she couldn’t make out anything other than apparently this sweater really accentuated her tits to waist ratio. Billy Hargrove really was a useless tool.

“No, I was planning to just wait it out, but then they started to fight! And a teacher was trying to get into the bathroom, and I just could not be roped into all of that drama. I have enough going on, y’know? So, I hopped out of the window. You all saw, you all know the rest,” All four boys nodded their heads, because, yes, apparently they all saw her fall from the window, and that seemed to prove her lie true enough.

“How’d you get out of the window?” Harrington finally questioned, gesturing to the window in question.

“I jumped, obviously.”

“That’s a high jump, Mueller,” Tommy looked up to the window, and Mandy followed his gaze. She spotted the window, and briefly pondered how she ever thought she was going to make it out of a window that high up. How the hell did she even get her foot out the window on her own? She was an idiot to think she would have gotten out without Eleven’s help.

“Ha! I know, right? That’s wild,” Mandy nodded along with him, smiling at her own accomplishment as she put her hands on her hips, “Anyway, can someone help me with this hair situation?”

“Sure,” Tommy grabbed the stick in her hair and gave it one hard tug, making her yowl like an angry cat at the painful suddenness of it all.

Grabbing at the back of her head, she screamed, “What the _fuck?!_ ”

“Aw, what’s the matter, Princess? Did that hurt?” Tommy mocked in a baby voice, waving the stick in her face as he feigned actual concern. Eyes watering just a little, Mandy snatched the stick from his grasp, swatting him over the head with it, and making him let out a pitiful, “Ow!”

“I’m gonna shove this stick so far up your ass, you’re gonna look like a shish kabob, Tommy. And then I’m gonna fucking cook you alive, Asshole!” Tommy took off at ‘shish kabob’, and Mandy gave chase once she finished her threat, only to be immediately snagged around the middle, Hargrove’s annoying laughter ringing in her ears as her feet left the ground. She kicked out, growling breathlessly as she writhed in his hold, “Let me go! I’m gonna kill him!”

“She seems off, right? I think she might’ve hit her head when she fell,” Her ears caught Harrington whispering to Morrow, and Mandy promptly snapped her head in their direction, all her limbs giving up their fight as she raised her stick forebodingly in Steve’s direction.

“I can hear you!” Steve jumped at being addressed, but Jamie looked barely caught-out. She swung the stick out, sending it soaring through the air in their direction, but both boys merely stepped away from each other, allowing the sailing twig to fly right between them and clatter the ground pathetically. How fucking anticlimactic! She had never been more disappointed. Hargrove’s hold on her loosened as he chortled at the same thing she was lamenting over, and she thrashed again, hoping to free herself to no avail, “I demand you release me!”

“Yeah, I don’t think so, Queenie,” Hargrove began, voice in her ear, his heavy breaths blowing some stray hairs into her face as he struggled to contain her, “I think you need to cool off before you go anywhere.” 

Heaving an exasperated exhale, Mandy began scrabbling at his hands around her middle, trying to pry his fingers from around her torso. She grabbed each digit individually, fighting it’s vice-like hold with the utmost intensity, until she could gain purchase and lift it. It all seemed to be going well, until she paused to look over her handiwork. For every finger she pried off, the one before it clamped down again, and she groaned at the unfairness of it all. 

“Hargrove!” Mandy whined pathetically, tossing her head back over his shoulder, feeling like a shakespearean tragedy, “Please.”

“Ooh, I think I could get used to hearing that,” He grumbled out huskily, and Mandy fucking hated him with every fiber of her being. Couldn’t he just stick to being gross when everyone wasn’t around? It was so embarrassing. Why was everything sexualized by guys? He was such a pig, “If you say it a little sweeter I might just think about it. How about that?”

“How about you eat shit and die?” Mandy asked coldly, peering over at him from slitted eyes and taking in his roguish smile.

“Now, that didn’t sound too sweet,” Hargrove announced, feigning confusion, “I must have heard you wrong. ‘Cause I was positive you— _oof!_ ”

Mandy promptly kicked her heel right into his groin, making the both of them collapse onto the ground in a heap. The other boys around them gave varying shouts of empathy. Clambering out from underneath his bemoaning form, she kicked out a little gravel with the heel of her boot, making him cough as she scrambled to her feet. She patted herself off before smirking down at him with crossed arms, watching as he recovered, pulling himself onto all fours. She borrowed his mocking tone for her next words, “Ooh, Hargrove, I think I could get used to you moaning for me like that.”

He laughed around a cough at her words, grunting out a choked, “Bitch.”

“Ooh, if you say it sweeter, I may just think about helping you up,” She laughed, bending over slightly, hands on her knees, before she locked eyes with him, “Ha! Sike! I would never.”

Mandy kicked a little more gravel into his face with the toe of her boot, before straightening to her full height and turning to leave as he sputtered, waving away the dust that billowed around his eyes. 

“Bitch!” He yelled at her retreating form as she passed by Tommy on his way back to the group. She turned, bouncing a little in her step and smiling cattishly as her eyes took in Hargrove stumbling to his feet. Her expression fell when she noticed him beaming that golden smile in her direction, though. He really had no business looking at her like that when he would be walking funny for the next week thanks to her. Sicko.

Mandy pretended to snatch the word from the air, placing her closed fist above her heart and feigning a lovestruck expression before dropping the ruse and holding up a middle finger in his direction. 

God, Mandy Mueller really did hate Billy Hargrove.


	4. Drop a House on That Witch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whatever you thought was going to happen next... it probably wasn't this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao this chapter is informally titled 'Night of the Ambiguous '80s References' I'm not even kidding like the last kit-cat clock I saw was in the '90s i don't think they even exist anymore?? damn i'm getting old lmao i think i need a sec to cry 
> 
> ANYWAY. Fun little reminder for everyone: I did mention there would be violence in this story, right? I'm cashing in!! :)
> 
> Also, there hasn't been a lot of Billy in these chapters (well, for a billy hargrove fanfiction, I guess lol I'm pretty sure eleven has managed to saturate this story more than billy haha oops) but next chap is 100% his pov, and I think I'm gonna try to get it out sometime this week! So please bear w/ me if you hate how this chap is written & how little Billy shows up, ya girl is struggling over here lmao send help

Bad days loved to get worse. And for Mandy, it had been a very bad day, indeed. 

It all started the night before, as she slept soundly. Mandy had laid her head down on soft satin sheets, and woke up to a vast blackness and Eleven’s wicked little smile.

“Not crazy,” Eleven had announced in her soft cooing tone, before giving pause, “Right?”

Mandy smiled back tentatively, shrugging with a helpless sigh, “Well, I guess not this time.”

Eleven’s face glowed at her words, lips pulling into a beaming grin as she walked forward, approaching Mandy’s side and taking her hand gently in her grasp, “Okay?”

“What?” Brows furrowed, Mandy tilted her chin down to look the younger girl in the eye as she allowed Eleven to lead her somewhere.

“This is okay?” The young girl gestured to their joined limbs.

It was startling the amount of consideration the girl took when dealing with her. But then, Mandy remembered the way they had dipped into each other’s memories when they first encountered one another, and the way she shrieked and paced like an animal, and maybe, Eleven was correct in being cautious around her. Mandy was erratic at best and tempestuous at the worst times, and Eleven had gotten to see her ruined mind in its starkest form. So really, Mandy shouldn’t have been surprised by the careful way the young girl handled her, even if it did seem odd to see such behavior being exhibited by a child.

They slid through space, the world zooming by in whispers all around them, before they stopped in the middle of a lonely road. Mandy peered around, clutching Eleven’s hand for the first time, feeling a little discombobulated.

“Where are we?” Mandy squinted into the dimness of the night, the forest around them casting blackened shadows all along the floor around their feet.

“Home,” Eleven replied very articulately.

Mandy turned her head to the younger girl, “Uh, what?”

“C’mon,” Eleven tugged her arm, nearly yanking it out of it’s socket as Mandy stood stock still, knitting her brows in confusion.

“You live in the woods? In these spooky woods?” Mandy asked aloud, before quietly whispering to herself, “Oh, my god, am I having a nightmare?”

“Spooky?” Eleven inquired, head tilted back slightly as her feet crunched through the dried leaves that littered the forest floor.

“Creepy,” Mandy reworded distractedly, peering through the darkness to try to get a better grasp of her surroundings.

Eleven pouted at another new word, brows knitted as she peeked over her shoulder to her older companion, “Creepy?”

Mandy rolled her eyes, swinging their joined limbs, “Haven’t you been scared before?”

Eleven merely nodded, looking over to her with barely contained intensity, “Yes.”

“Well, it’s like that horrible feeling,” Mandy explained, raising her brows as the girl continued to drag her along, if only a bit slower as she spoke, “Creepy and Spooky are like Scary. If something is creepy it makes you a little scared, get it?”

“Okay,” Eleven nodded, “I don’t think it’s spooky, though. Just quiet.”

And lonely, Mandy thought, looking to the somber girl. As they approached a forked path, Eleven dragged the two of them down the lesser trekked on of the two. They walked for only a minute, the world a fuzz of muted gray around them, before Eleven stopped them before a little cabin. Mandy was busy looking up at the structure, while Eleven was pointing at the ground before them.

“Trap wire,” Eleven announced, pointing down to the space between two twin trees. Mandy rose her brows, squinting at the ground, unable to see anything through the pitch black.

“Uh, okay, I’m gonna have to ask. Why do you have a trap wire outside of your house?” She questioned uncertainly as the young girl dragged her around the innocuous looking trees.

“For protection,” Eleven answered unflinchingly.

“From?” Mandy’s brows rose even higher on her face as they tromped up the steps.

Eleven turned to her as they stood before the doorway, doe eyes reflecting the full moon like two shiny quarters, “The bad men.”

Mandy didn’t have to ask again, for she saw it in her mind like violent fireworks. Men in white uniforms, men in black suits, a tall man with white hair and a smile like a sharp knife. She saw small feet on linoleum floors, the glare of the florescent lights, and smelled the staleness in the air. She felt the isolation, the encroaching terror, and then the slam of the door. She was alone, and he told her it was her own fault. She was kept, and she hated it. They would never get her again. Mandy blinked away the memories, closing her eyes one final time and nodding to the smaller girl, before opening her eyes to peer down at her.

“I’m sorry,” Mandy stated into the quiet.

“They’re gone,” Eleven explained in a hushed murmur, “But more might come. So I can’t be stupid.”

Mandy nodded again, letting her words sink in. She tried to grasp at the imagery that had flooded her mind—the stark halls, the beeping monitors, and the sudden rush of escape. All the walls were the same, and all the windows showed some unremarkable forest. Just where the hell did this girl come from? Mandy distractedly watched as the girl pushed open the door, showing the space off with absolutely no ceremony. Honestly, Eleven had no sense of propriety. 

Mandy slipped into the small cottage, taking in her surroundings, eyes darting up the slanted ceiling and wood-paneled walls. Her gaze settled on the clock on the wall, an annoying ticking coming from it, the hands settled near the four and the six. By the time she turned back to her host, Eleven was gone, and Mandy’s head whipped around, not seeing her anywhere, before stepping further into the room.

“Hello? Have I just been abandoned in a spooky cabin in the fucking woods?! Eleven!” Mandy hissed out desperately as she sprang into action, marching around the enclosed space, first into a little kitchen nook, and then right into a living quarters filled with horrifically outdated furniture. Mandy grimaced at a particularly awful faded floral couch, before spying the young girl’s silhouette casting blackened shadows in front of the static of a television. Mandy shrieked when she spotted Eleven, her body illuminated in the hazy grays of the monitor, finding the image too startlingly familiar to that of The Poltergeist, “What the fuck?!”

Eleven whipped around, curls flying around her eyes as she craned her neck in her direction, blinking owlishly.

“I see you,” Eleven whispered, and Mandy frowned at the oddly awed way she was speaking.

“Yes, obviously, you brought me here,” Mandy waved her arms around as she spoke, grumpier than usual because of her unsettling surroundings.

Eleven stood from her spot before the tv, walking toward her with wide eyes, before moving to the coffee table and picking up a cheap plastic cup that was left out. She held out the cup pointedly, showing how she lifted it, before bringing it before Mandy, presenting it to her.

“Take it,” Eleven commanded, head nodding along mechanically. 

Mandy was starting to understand her line of thought, and reached forward to grab the cup, only for her fingers disappear into a powdery plume as she tried to close her fist around the cylinder. She pulled her hand away with a jolt, shaking it out as she tried to will away the phantom sparks that had crawled up her arm at the contact. When she finished, she looked down at her palm, watching as the limb reformed, her skin reappearing in a sizzling shimmer before her very own eyes. Her lips parted, no words coming to her as her eyes slid up to meet Eleven’s heated gaze.

“I _see_ you,” Eleven restated, leaving the last half of the statement unspoken. _And you aren’t even here._

“I—“ Mandy began, looking bewildered, before trying to place her hand on the cup again and again, each time yielding the same results, until she reached up to fist her bed-mangled hair between her fingers, “How?! How are you here, and I’m—I’m—I- _I’m not!_ I’m not physically here! Oh, my god! Where am I?! Am I dead!?!”

Eleven smiled at her fretfulness, reaching a hand up to smother a giggle that was threatening to slip out, and Mandy pointed down at her warningly, “Don’t laugh at me. This is serious, you brat! We’re talking about my immortal essence!!” 

“You’re not dead,” Eleven declared, voice unabashed and coated with bountiful amusement, “You’re like me. I told you.”

Mandy huffed at her words, pacing the room in near panic, trying to pick up the little nicknacks along all the surfaces, always coming back empty handed. Well, ugh! Her frustration was boiling up, her anxiety bouncing around inside her, and her bewilderment had her head practically torn in two. Finally, she came back to Eleven, her little form staring up at her expectantly, as if waiting to see what other humorous things she was capable of.

“This is impossible,” Mandy stated finally, “I went to sleep, and this is all a dream.”

“No,” Eleven replied evenly as she shook her head, “It’s not.”

“Yes!” Mandy screamed, jumping a little on her toes and pointing down at her, “It has to be! This is impossible!!”

“Not for us,” Eleven stated simply, recalling Mandy’s own words, “Magic pants, remember?”

Mandy groaned, tossing her head back as she cried out petulantly, “No!”

Eleven’s entire being coiled tight with her exasperation, and Mandy only noticed right before she exploded, the windows around them warbling in their panes, “Yes!! You’re special! Stop lying just because you’re scared!!!”

The silence that sounded after that statement had Mandy’s hair rising, her bones rattling around in her body, and her very being vibrating. Eleven slunk away from her slowly, eyes wide as she stared at the floor, small creaks coming from the wood beneath Mandy’s feet. Before Mandy could look down, the door on the far side of the room swung wide, a man staggering out into the space, face scrunched up and rubbing his eyes tiredly. The moment shattered, the silence gone, and Mandy’s bones quivered to a stop.

“What the hell are you doing out here, Kid? You should be asleep,” The man grumbled, and Mandy looked down to Eleven with wide eyes.

“Sorry,” Eleven stated sheepishly, and Mandy waved her hand in the air as the man put his hands on his hips across the room, looking to the younger girl and completely dismissing her.

“Why are you even awake?” The man asked, before spotting the blaring television in the backdrop, “Were you trying to talk to him again? Y’know, it's a school night.”

Mandy paused, looking to the tv and then Eleven, brows jumping up toward her hairline, “A him? A boy! You’re talking to a boy! Through the tv! Is he like us?”

Eleven shook her head, eyes darting to Mandy pointedly in a wordless reply, “No, I wasn’t.”

“But you can talk to him? Through the television? How?” Mandy spouted off, cocking her hip as she ignored the grown man who couldn’t see her, “How are you doing any of this? Like how am I even here? And can he really not see me?”

Mandy jerked a thumb in the direction of the man across the room, whose eyes didn’t even turn to her regardless of the huge ruckus she was creating right before him. Her head swung around between the girl and the older man.

“Then what, huh? You weren’t doing anything stupid, right?” The man asked, stepping forward as he peered around the darkened room, searching for something unnamable. Mandy watched his eyes slide right over her, before he doubled back, gaze set on her, “What the hell is that?”

“What?” Eleven asked innocuously, and Mandy pointed to herself silently, squeaking as he stepped towards her intimidatingly, only to be walked through on his way to something behind her. Mandy blustered as she disappeared into a glittering plume of nothingness, before reforming with a terrible rolling nausea inside her. She saw the hospital and the funeral and the cruel fate the world dealt; she heard the monitors, the shrieking wail, and the slap of the divorce papers; she felt the loss, the hollow numbness, and then, a garden of weeds blooming one weak little wild flower. She had to protect it, she had to do it right this time, she had to—The world shifted, the ground falling out beneath her, and she spilled right back into her thrashing body.

Awaking with a start, Mandy rose from the bed, gasping and choking, before tumbling out of bed and stumbling into the bathroom, dropping onto her knees before the toilet and promptly vomiting into it. When her stomach was empty and she was finished dry-heaving, she flushed the toilet, setting down the lid and plopping onto her ass on the ground, hanging her head pitifully as tears leaked from her eyes. She rubbed at her face, feeling the stickiness of sweat and tasting the salt of her tears. Her body was coated in sweat, her pajamas clinging to her skin and making her itchy all over. Her whole body was hypersensitive, her bones aching, and her skin raw. 

With a sigh, she turned on the shower, stripping off her clothes and climbing inside.

It was already a bad day, and it had barely even started.

* * *

By the time she got to school, she felt hungover, and she looked like death incarnate. She stopped her car, pulling up the brake, and sat for a moment, hoping to collect herself. Her whole life was spiraling out of control, and she was actually pondering the actual meaning of reality. Placing her head against the steering wheel, she breathed deeply. Her horrible night terrors, waking up at the bottom of Steve Harrington’s pool, the odd bruises and scratches, and now a girl only she could see, who had walked her off to who-knows-where all without her body. So, what? Her soul, or spirit, or projected consciousness, or whatever, just… left its body last night? And Eleven, a girl who was real in actuality, had just shepherded her off? Because, apparently, she could do the same thing? This was a headache.

There were two scenarios that she could come up with that would could explain everything that was happening to her. The first was the obvious; Mandy Mueller was a nutcase. They stuck that needle into her brain only to make her all the more crazy. None of this was real—she was just imagining Eleven, and she was walking around at night without remembering, and she was hurting herself during her episodes. All the voices in her head, all the sounds and colors, and all the overwhelming emotions weren’t real. Steve Harrington might have been a great mind, and Billy Hargrove might have been a totally adjusted boy who just liked to mess with her. Okay, so the more she thought about it, this seemed less likely. Simply because Steve was an obvious idiot, and Billy was a demon in human form. She only figured those things out sooner, because she could read minds. Which was crazy, but apparently, entirely possible.

The second option was scarier, because it seemed to be the one that made more sense the more she puzzled over it. Mandy Mueller wasn’t crazy at all, but the world around her absolutely was. A little girl by the name of Eleven, who moved things with her mind, spoke to her in her dreams, and then appeared before her like magic. The monsters she saw in her dreams were real—they tackled her to ground and opened their faces to try to devour her, and she awoke before they could, pulled back into her body that had found itself somewhere else entirely. All the things she saw and heard in her head, were all the thoughts of everyone around her. She could read people’s minds as if she were simply flipping through the pages of a magazine. Their greatest secrets and their worst fears were all available to her should she ever reach deep enough. She could feel other people’s emotions, could see and hear their thoughts. That was crazy, but not all together unheard of. And it seemed to be factual the longer she thought about it.

She had her toes right on the precipice of something she had no name for. Mandy felt like an epiphany was right around the corner for her, and that feeling terrified her. Maybe, once she figured all this out, it would open a door to something even more expansive, and once that happened, there would be no going back. It would be the death of her normal life as she knew it. 

Mandy lifted her head from its resting position, groaning low in her throat as she realized something with sudden, violent clarity. This was her normal life now, and had been for a while. What a fucking mess. She took a deep breath, readying herself for the world.

Mandy opened her car door, swinging her legs out and pulling up the seat of her jeans as she stood. She was confident, she reminded herself, confident and beautiful. She felt like shit, but the rest still stood. Reality as she knew it was disintegrating before her very eyes, but still—confident and beautiful. Her mind chanted those words to her. Confident and beautiful, and capable of anything.

Mandy marched across the parking lot as kids loitered by the their cars. If there was one thing she hated about school, it was the fact that people just _existed._ Everywhere she turned, people were just hanging out and existing. It was maddening, especially because her head was still a little raw from the ordeal she suffered through the night prior. Her eyes burned in the light of day, and her ears rang as a particularly loud car drove past her. She squinted against the assault of everyone’s thoughts for a moment, walking a little faster to try to get into the school building.

“Hey, Mandy!” A vibrant girl shouted as she walked past, and Mandy jolted at the sound of her name. She waved wordlessly, trying to smile past a grimace as she walked by. A sigh of relief left her as she passed, and Mandy patted down her blazer, straightening up as she neared the school building, swinging open the door and slipping inside.

She was going straight to the library, because she needed a book to help her figure this all out. What does one call leaving their physical form? Did she need a book about, like, physics or something? Meta-physical human anatomy? Or maybe a book about good old-fashioned mysticism? Did her school even have things like that?

When she stopped before the door to the school library, she gave pause at the ‘closed’ sign that hung sideways on the door. Um, what the hell? Oh, so the one time she needed to actually research something, the library was closed? How unlucky could she possibly get? She jerked the door handle, hoping it would just open for her anyway. It did not. What a bitch.

A tap on her shoulder startled her out of her glaring at the sign, and she peeked around her shoulder to spy Nancy Wheeler of all people.

“Uh, hey, Mandy,” Nancy greeted hesitantly, “What are you doing?”

“Wheeler, would you happen to know why the library isn’t open today?” Mandy turned her whole body to stare down at Nancy Wheeler’s slight form, gesticulating with one open hand as she placed the other on her hip.

“Oh, it’s just not open yet,” Nancy smiled, clutching the book in her hands tightly, before opening the book return slot and dropping it in, “Maybe try later when the Librarian is in. She doesn’t come in until second period.”

“Shit,” Mandy cursed, craning her neck to hatefully ogle the closed door. Nancy laughed a little at her, covering her mouth with a manicured hand.

“Well, good luck with finding what you’re looking for,” Nancy waved as she set off, meeting a restless Jonathan Byers at the end of the hall before disappearing out of sight.

Once she was gone, Mandy stomped one angry foot into the ground, gritting her teeth and fighting down the screech she really wanted to emit, before kicking the wooden door. Once she did, the window pane on the door still rattling, she marched off in a huff. The world wasn’t fair! Nothing was ever going to go right in her God forsaken life! She hated everything!

She was still fuming when she bumped into Steve Harrington, who merely eyed her, toeing around her like she was a hungry beast.

“Morning, Mandy,” Steve greeted tentatively as he wound his way around her. She didn’t even get a chance to say anything back before he was gone, and Mandy huffed at the dismissal. It wasn’t even like she wanted to talk to him, but Jesus! Did anyone have any fucking decorum around here?! How rude was Steve Harrington?! Like, ugh!

She went to class for first period, tapping her fingernails against the desk and jittering one foot on the ground as she waited for class to be over. It was the slowest hour of her young life. When she was finally released, her heels practically squealed as she turned out of the class, sprinting down the hall with quick strides. 

“Hey, Mueller!! Walk! You’re indoors!” A disciplinary shouted at her as she turned down another hallway, and she slowed to speed walking as she filed through another class that was just getting out. A hand whipped out to grab her as she wove through the herd of teens.

Billy Hargrove’s face appeared before her own, and she scowled, feeling too disarrayed to even entertain him. He looked to her evenly, his expression level besides the slight raise of his brows.

“Where the hell are you running off to?” He asked with half-hearted curiosity, and Mandy ripped herself out of his grasp viciously.

“Now!” She shouted ferociously, voice guttural as she pointed a finger at him for emphasis, “Is not the time, Hargrove!”

His brows jumped on his face, eyes widening very slightly as he watched her stalk off with some great purpose he had absolutely no understanding of. Hargrove turned to the guy standing behind him, jerking a thumb in the direction Mandy had vacated, “What the fuck?”

The boy simply shrugged, waving a hand dismissively, “Mueller’s always a bitch, just leave it.”

By the time she returned to the library, an older woman was shuffling inside, jamming the door open, and Mandy cheered inwardly. She strutted into the room, hair blowing behind her and jewelry chiming loudly in the quiet space. 

“Hey!” She greeted enthusiastically as she watched the woman settle behind the desk.

“Shh!!” She shushed, and Mandy realized belatedly how much noise she was making.

“Hey,” Mandy tried again, her voice hushed the second time around, “I’m looking for a book about, like, uh… what happens when we die. Like, when our spirit leaves our corpse.”

“The Bible,” The woman clarified, and Mandy shook her head.

“No,” Mandy denounced immediately, “Like, something less religious. I need to know the science behind it.”

“Religion and science are two very different things,” The librarian announced unnecessarily.

“Okay, first of all,” Mandy began, stopping herself short before she could fall into a bratty tirade, “Ugh! No, I don’t want a book about religion! I need something else about the mind leaving the body or whatever.”

“Sounds like witchcraft,” The librarian commented, and Mandy was ready to throw the biggest fit of all time.

“It’s not witchcraft!!” Mandy hissed out between clenched teeth, slamming her hands on the wooden countertop, her bracelets clattering along the surface, “It’s science! I need a book about how a person can project a non-physical manifestation of their consciousness in other locations without their body!”

“That’s witchcraft,” The woman declared dryly, setting her glasses on her nose as she stood, “Follow me.”

Mandy didn’t even get a chance to continue her dispute, before she was being led to a small isolated shelf against the back wall, three books settled on top. The librarian gestured to them dully.

“Here ya go,” The woman left her with that, and Mandy lamented soundlessly, tossing her head back despairingly. One book was about satanism, another a literal spell book, and the last was a historical non-fiction about witches. Mandy didn’t know what to do, so she simply grabbed the historical book and trudged to the front desk, slapping the book onto the countertop.

“I’ll take this, I guess,” She muttered, and the woman checked her out, eyeing her willfully from behind a pair of tragic reading glasses. What a bitch, honestly! Get a life, Lady!! Mandy left completely ruffled, stomping out like a petulant child as she complained internally about the shittiness of the human population. 

She skipped second period, the only reason being it was barely 9:30 and she already needed some R&R. Mandy swung open her convertible top and hopped into her car, tossing her bag into the backseat and opening her witch book that she apparently asked for. She put on her sunglasses and set back her car seat, ready to laze away an hour until her next class. The book got heavy where she held it up in front of her eyes as she reclined, and eventually, she tossed the book aside, deciding to close her eyes for just a moment so she could clear her mind.

She awoke to a loud crunch.

“Mueller, are you dead?” Somebody asked from above her, their shadow blocking the sun from her eyes.

“Ugh,” She groaned, feeling foggy and disjointed, “I fuckin’ wish.”

“Oh, she’s alive,” It probably should have bothered her how disappointed they sounded.

She pulled off her glasses and sat up, spying four figures around her car. Ugh, there was really nothing worse than having to engage in conversation with people just after waking up.

“Why the fuck are you eating chips this early, you fucking caveman?” Mandy asked grumpily as her vision cleared enough to spot Tommy’s form, Carol’s face hovering right over his shoulder.

“It’s lunch, Mandy,” A voice explained from the passenger side of the car, Becky Chapman and her nylon jacket making an appearance, Billy Hargrove and a can of coke beside her.

Mandy flopped back into her seat, putting her sunglasses back down, “Great, now everyone go away.”

“God, Mandy, way to be rude,” Carol sneered, “We were just checking to see if you were okay.”

“Yeah,” Tommy snorted a little in amusement, “Steve’s still worried you’re concussed from that time you fell out of that window, remember that?”

It was, like, literally a day ago.

“No, I don’t recall,” Mandy sniffed haughtily, reclining still and trying to silently wish the group away from her to no avail, “You must be thinking of someone else.”

Tommy cackled, a wheezing laugh that sounded a little bit too much like Muttley in Mandy’s opinion. Carol looked to his shaking form with confusion, and then around the group for any explanation, but none came.

“Mueller,” Tommy finally spoke, leaning against her car door, hands resting at the bottom of her open window, “I don’t care what anyone else says! You really are a riot.”

Mandy pursed her lips, “Thanks. You can go now.”

She really needed them to leave, because their minds were raging against her cranium. Becky Chapman had a date this Friday and was too fucking excited about it, Carol was a shrieking monster over a joke she didn’t understand, and Tommy was a smug shithead, his mind replaying the memory of a single suede boot waving out of a window like the white flag of surrender, before Mandy Mueller and her denim-clad ass shot out of the window, crashing to the ground with a girly shout of distress. She didn’t really sound like that, did she? Mandy thought maybe she ought to have been more embarrassed by the whole ordeal. And Billy Hargrove was just a problem she didn’t even have the strength to try to manage. His mind was just colors flashing vividly against her eyelids, warbling sounds, and memories rippling like disturbed water. She tried not to concentrate on him.

“Yeah, yeah, Mueller,” Tommy waved at her, linking an arm around Carol as they both began to walk off, “Might want to get up, though. If you plan on coming to class, anyway.”

Ugh, right. School. She went there.

“Ugh, right,” Mandy despaired aloud, grabbing her head with one hand as she closed her eyes to garner strength. She probably should go to class. She swung open her door, feeling dead on her feet as she stepped out of her car and fixed herself, straightening her jacket and adjusting the waist of her pants before grabbing her bag and car keys.

“Are you alright?” The question startled her in the middle of locking her car, the key scraping against the painted metal and making her curse under her breath as she saw the inch-long line around the keyhole. Shit. She pushed her glasses down her nose, looking to Hargrove with barely contained venom. Becky walked a little ahead of him, seeming to have left thinking he would follow. He hadn’t.

“What the hell is that supposed mean?” She retorted without hesitation, already on the offensive with him, regardless of how suddenly compassionate he seemed. It was all bullshit, obviously. Even if he did decide to be strangely human about how sickly she seemed, he would be back to the irritating asshole he always was before she knew it.

“It’s just a fucking question, Princess,” Hargrove sneered, brows pulling below the line of his aviators for a moment as he frowned at her, “Jesus Christ, didn’t know I was gonna get interrogated for giving a shit.”

“Save it for someone else, Hargrove,” Mandy stated tiredly, rolling her eyes from behind her shades as she held her open palm up in a simple ‘stop’ motion, “I don’t need to hear it.”

He scoffed in indignation at her crude dismissal, whipping off his glasses. Both of them met around the front of the car, Mandy trying to get away as fast possible, and Hargrove just being too annoying to just catch a hint as he shadowed her at every step. She swore she could feel him breathing down her neck. It was both infuriating and anxiety-inducing.

“Oh, so you’re just gonna be a bitch, right?” He asked redundantly, snatching her arm to draw her to a stop when she nearly escaped him, and Mandy flung around so quickly, she saw the flash in his mind as he caught the hand that was readying to strike him before she even realized what she was doing, “You gonna fucking hit me, Princess? Really? That’s how you’re gonna repay me for giving a shit? You really think that’s a good idea, huh?”

Hand still mid-air, palm open between them—Hargrove squeezing down on her wrist, his other hand tight on her bicep. Mandy couldn’t make sense of any of it. Her breath was leaving her in hissing gasps, and she realized belatedly that she just swung at his face. For some reason, he had expected that reaction, and Mandy didn’t even know how that was possible, since she was absolutely baffled. She hadn’t even thought about doing it, she just turned and raised her hand like the action was ingrained into her. Mandy blinked up at him, eyes wide behind her glasses as she looked between her open hand and Hargrove’s glowering face.

Her mind ran away from her when she mistakenly locked her eyes on his steely gaze, pictures forming behind her eyes like a movie. Long winding roads, a woman with wild blonde hair and an undeniably pretty face singing loud with all the windows down, the wind whipping her hair all around her. She looked free, for once. The same woman, screaming, eyes tight and throat strained, slamming doors. That picture made more sense, for some reason. Being small and being held to a warm body, terror, shouting, tears. _Don’t worry, Baby, I got you. I won’t let him ever hurt you._ He really wanted to leave and never come back. He just wanted to be free, like that one time—with the wind, and the music. He wanted to be wild like that. When she left, it shredded him to ribbons. Things would be different. 

Mandy blinked away the images, the lingering voice echoing through her head. _I got you. I won’t let him ever hurt you._ It remained a haunting reminder of the things she just saw, and Mandy fought his grasp, eyes stinging for a hurt that wasn’t even hers. It was all so unfair, really. Her heart ached and her head bathed in violent reds. This wasn’t hers. She wasn’t meant to see all of this. These weren’t her memories, and these weren’t her emotions. But it all felt so painfully real.

“Let me go,” She croaked out, sounding wooden and bleak even to her own ears.

Hargrove pursed his lips, “Answer the question.”

“Well, ugh!” Mandy’s voice took on a desperate tone that she resented, but was helpless to change, “I-I-I don’t know! I just don’t fucking know, okay?! Just let me go! I’m sorry!”

He released her so suddenly that she stumbled back a few steps, rocking on her heels to a stop. Stepping forward, he locked his eyes on her, voice so low it rumbled out of him like the roll of thunder before the strike of lightning, “You know better now? I’m not Harrington, Princess, and I’m not gonna play bitch for you. You disrespect me and raise your fucking hand to me again, and you’ll be getting it back from now on. Are we clear?”

Mandy locked her jaw at his words, unwilling to answer. Her emotions churned like the tide during a storm, and she couldn’t make out what was her and what was Hargrove. She wanted to scream in his face and tell him to go fuck himself. He was such a hypocrite. He wanted to incite and pick fights, but the second someone came around and struck first he wanted to be a bitch. It was such bullshit! She really didn’t owe him shit. She kind of wished her hand had connected.

“I said,” He growled lowly, face jerking closer to her as he tucked his chin in and eyed her spitefully, eyes darting between her eyes respectively as he tried to catch her gaze from behind her shiny black glasses. He became so irritated at staring into his own reflection in her sunglasses that he snatched them off her in one quick swoop, making Mandy wince from both the pain of her hair snagging on them and the light that spilled over her vision. His eyes looked bluer than she remembered, and his breathe gusted gently over the planes of her face. He smelled both sweet and acrid, and she could pick up the distinct smell of Marlboro on his breath, “Are we clear?”

Mandy wasn’t going to say what she really thought on the matter, but she absolutely refused to give him what he wanted. He wanted compliance, her will bent; her taking a knee and kissing the fucking ring. She wouldn’t comply. She refused to bend. And _as if_ she would ever get on her knees for him. 

Hargrove saw of all that. He saw it in her willful gaze, the way she stood straight and still, and he wanted to wring all that resolve right out of her. His mind was a howling storm inside him. Manic thoughts, and bad ideas. He wanted to make her break, his mind running through every way he could possibly make that happen. None would work on her, though. He seemed to already realize that. His head sat on a razor’s edge, anticipating violence before she even spoke.

“Fine. It’s all the same to me,” She replied, voice trained into its usual lull, eyes locked onto his gaze. She refused to lose, and refused to back down, and refused to cow for an annoying boy like Billy Hargrove. He really wasn’t shit, and she refused to give him anything.

His mind reared up like a hungry dog on a chain. It wanted a fight. It wanted the hunt and the satisfaction of tearing her apart. It wanted a reason. Something good. Something it could really sink its teeth into. She could relate, honestly; she wanted to bite his head right off his shoulders for the way he was talking to her. Maybe, a small part of her mind called out, sounding frighteningly like the boy standing before her, she really could take him. He probably hit like a brick and played dirty, but Mandy could take it. She’d just have to endure until she could sink her fingers into his eye sockets and scratch his eyes out. Then she’d have him right where she wanted him—bleeding and screaming.

“Good, then you know where we stand,” Hargrove answered, breaking Mandy out of her reverie as he drew away from her, his hungry mind dragging along after him. Mandy’s brows twitched, eyes narrowing in his direction as he moved away from her, walking off towards Becky who had continued her walk back to class, just slower than Tommy and Carol. He stuffed his hands in his pockets as he reached her, and Becky looked to him with concern, placing a hand on his arm that he gracelessly shrugged off as she tried speaking to him. Her words were too quiet for Mandy to hear, and she didn’t try to make them out. Mandy really didn’t want to know, but that didn’t stop her from watching the pair with keen eyes until they disappeared from sight.

It wasn’t even until they were gone that she realized he had walked off with her sunglasses. Stupid asshole.

* * *

Mandy really felt like she couldn’t get a break. Like, wasn’t it enough that the universe was constantly shitting on her? Why did everyone want something from her? Her time, her acceptance, her opinion, her gossip, or her compliance. Everyone was always riding her for something. She literally couldn’t sleep without someone hunting her down and accosting her! Even Eleven wanted to drag her off to fuck-off nowhere in the middle of the woods while she was meant to be sleeping. Mandy just wanted peace, for once!

“Hey, Mandy,” A voice broke her out of her internal diatribe as she trudged banefully to her next class, and she turned to spot Tommy and Carol at Tommy’s locker, both eyeing her with barely contained glee. Great, the dynamic dipshits were up to something again. Mandy didn’t know if she was even capable of dealing with this type of shit today.

“Wanna hear something we heard?” Carol asked, her voice a stage whisper, and her eyes glinting maliciously.

“No,” Mandy answered dully, before sighing, “But you’re gonna tell me anyway, so have at it.”

“We heard that you’ve been busy,” Tommy announced, sounding so innocent that Mandy knew what was coming next was going to be anything but, “Breaking up Amy Radner and Billy Hargrove.”

Mandy snorted, bad mood easing at the topic, “Who the hell said that?”

“Radner,” Carol replied, eyes shining with pure malignant excitement, “She said that you’re a total prude who wants to ruin everyone else’s fun.”

Mandy kind of was, honestly. The kind of fun Hawkins kids had was insipid and annoying, and she really wished she was better at sucking the joy out of things, but people just found it more funny when she got irritated and tried to shut down everyone’s good time. It was a very circular and troublesome issue for her, and she had not figured out a way around it, yet.

Mandy shrugged, and Tommy and Carol both gasped at her lack of denial.

“Are you seriously admitting you broke them up?!”

“Oh, my God, Mueller!”

Mandy shrugged again, “Why don’t you just ask Hargrove yourself? Like, c’mon, wouldn’t he know why he isn’t seeing Radner anymore?”

Tommy rose his brows, cackling at her, “Why would I do that when you’re so much more fun to bother?”

“Billy wouldn’t say why,” Carol voiced with ringing disappointment, making Mandy smirk over at Tommy’s sheepish, but somehow completely unashamed, grin.

“Yeah, well, whatever,” Mandy waved her hand at them as she parted ways, leaving them standing before Tommy’s locker, “Who gives a shit? Radner should just get over it. Just tell her to suck it up and move on.”

Tommy and Carol waved to her back as she walked off, both sporting similar smirks.

“Sure, we’ll tell her for you, Mueller.”

* * *

Mandy Mueller left school feeling like a champion. She had actually survived her awful day, and it was a miraculous feat. Billy Hargrove disappeared for the rest of the day after they had locked horns, and it was a great feeling to be free of his heavy gaze and looming presence. She hadn’t even seen Eleven, the little phantom girl, regardless of how out of sorts she was, and for some reason, that felt like an accomplishment in and of itself. She could put a hold on all the doubts that swam in the back of her consciousness. When Eleven wasn’t around, she could almost lie and say none of it was real. It was a different sort of nice.

As she walked across the parking lot, she allowed herself a deep inhale of the fresh autumn air, smiling a little to herself as the crisp breeze bit at her cheeks. She was home free, and it was a glorious moment. So glorious, that Mandy didn’t know why she didn’t suspect something to go horribly wrong.

The slam into her legs sent her careening, the world tossing her around like she was set to tumble-dry at the laundromat. She was weightless, and also burning with a lead-like heaviness. She heard the crack, the crunch, the snap of her teeth, the clatter of her bracelets against metal, and then the thump she emitted once she met the pavement. She couldn’t even think after that, her body exploding with a warm liquid-y sensation that made her feel like she was boneless and gooey all over.

She was barely cognizant, her consciousness tossing listlessly around in the back of her mind, trying to snap out of it. She heard voices, hushed murmurs, the slamming of a car door, and then the warbling words that rang in and out of her ears. 

“You hear—Bitch!” A voice cut in and out like a struggling radio signal, “Don’t—business—learn—Steve—mine—jealous!”

Mandy struggled to regain consciousness, her eyes rolling back into her cranium as she tried lifting her head. She had no idea where she was, and she couldn’t make sense of anything around her. She was confused and feeling totally dysphoric, unable to even open her eyes in the moment. The world was a howling whisper, all the minds around her rushing together like a school of fish in the sea. Bigger and bigger, her mind expanded, until her whole being was a ball of yarn composed of all the collective experiences of those around her. She was everything and nothing, and she almost lost herself in the woven chaos until she was crudely brought back to reality.

The first strike made her head feel like cotton. The second strike she heard more than felt. The third strike had liquid flooding her mouth, and her eyes fluttering. She was almost there. And when the fourth came, a voice came with it.

“Get up!” The voice echoed with startling clarity. Momentarily, a face entered her mind behind her shuttered eyes. It was a little girl with chocolate curls and a burning gaze. Mandy could swear she recognized her, she just couldn’t pin-point how, “Get up, Stupid!!”

That sounded like a good idea, and Mandy’s eyes opened the moment the fifth strike came, a fist flying right into her eye socket. Her head spun, whistling sounding from her ears and blocking out the murmur of everyone’s minds. She shook her head out in hopes of shutting it up for good. She sat up, barely coherent, sending the weight on her tumbling to the ground as she grabbed at her head. Her brain felt like scrambled eggs presently.

“What the fuck,” She bit out dully, a glob of warm liquid leaving her mouth, she spat at it as it hindered her speech for split second, “Who fucking— _sttppff_ —ugh, gross.”

“Holy shit! Mandy Mueller’s actually alive!!” Obviously. Well, last time she checked, anyway. Maybe, she didn’t know. It was all a little gray at the moment. Mandy shook her head again, trying to rid herself of the wooly feeling that plagued her. The crowd around her gasped at the words, and she looked around, grimacing at the vibrancy of the world, before a fist met her temple, and she dropped to the floor again, cheek scraping against the pavement.

“I said get up!” The voice said again, a little girl standing before the crowd.

“Okay, fuck!” Mandy popped back up, feeling like a bobble head and tossing the person off for good, rolling onto them for good measure, and pushing her hands into their nose and forehead respectively. They tried chomping down on her open palm, and Mandy smushed their face in harder. The next sound the person beneath her made sounded suspiciously dog-like. Fucking weirdo. Her mind was struggling for everything except insults and curses, apparently.

She pressed their face further into the cement, before beginning to crawl away from the situation, completely befuddled as to what was even happening. She kind of felt like she needed both a nap, and maybe a place to hide. She was half-way off the person, one knee around their arm, and the other plopping down beside their head, before she was grabbed by the belt-loops and tugged back to the floor. 

Mandy grasped at the air as she was dropped again, clawing at the ground pitifully as she cried out helpless nonsense.

“You fucking bitch!” The distorted radio-voice from earlier screamed up at her, and Mandy looked down briefly, eyes flashing with recognition. She knew this girl. She had brown hair and almond eyes, framed by an oval face and a taut expression. But how…? Oh, she had it! School! Fuck, she remembered, she was leaving school and then… what? What happened after that? She couldn’t remember, really. A loud sound, maybe. Shit, she didn’t know. Who even was the person hitting her?

She squinted down at the face below her, thinking a thousand things in a mere millisecond, and then it came to her. Holy shit. Amy Radner was just on top of her and beating her ass. What the hell? A heady rush of indignant righteousness rose up in her. What a fucking bitch, honestly.

“Amy Radner,” Mandy stated emotionlessly, slapping Amy across the face with a blistering whack, “You talk too much.”

That was followed up by another slap, and another, and another, until Radner was trying to bat away her succeeding strikes before they even came, sputtering and hissing like a mad cat. Mandy couldn’t help herself. Amy Radner was completely red faced, fussing and stuttering, and looked like a Loony Toon to her in that moment. Mandy just burst out laughing. It was just too much, and tears welled up in her eyes as she cackled like a mad woman.

“You think this is funny, Bitch?!” Amy Radner shouted from beneath her, and Mandy was swept up in the hysteria of it all.

“Did you just hit me with your car?” The realization zapped through her, and Mandy was a howling mess once it came to her. She was just hit by a car! Amy Radner’s Pinto, to be exact. And Radner was mad about something, and Mandy couldn’t bare the absurdity of it all. Because what the fuck, right? What the actual fuck? Her life was absolutely insane, and that was just with the freaky mind stuff. This shit was just the cherry on top. Swear to God, Mandy must have been the most exciting thing to ever happen to Hawkins, Indiana. Fucking losers, “Were you really trying to kill me? With your lame-ass Pinto? Seriously?!”

Mandy bowed as her laughter erupted from her, Amy Radner’s face distorted from the water leaking from her eyes. It was all too surreal. Amy Radner tried to punch her again, and Mandy flew back, avoiding the strike and ensnaring Amy’s arm under her own, before grabbing the girl below her by the hair and slamming the side of her face into the pavement, once, then twice, then the third for good measure. Amy Radner bobbed back up like she was buoyant, smile half-gone and blood coating her lips. Mandy stood, pushing her back to the ground when the girl tried to follow her.

Rising to her feet, she staggered away, trying to fight off the headrush that came with being upright again. Mandy pressed a single hand into the ugly car beside her, leaning and shaking out her head, trying to reorient herself. She spied the cobweb cracks in the windshield of Amy’s pinto, briefly wondering where they came from, before she remembered the true reason. Right, she smacked into that windshield and broke it. For some reason that was so fucking funny, Mandy could barely stand it.

“You did! You hit me with your car!” She was being obnoxious, even in her own opinion, and she still couldn’t stop herself. All her words just flooded out of her, briefly broken up by sudden bouts of howling laughter, “This must be so embarrassing for you. Couldn’t even kick my ass after you hit me with your car! Ha! Oh, my God, Amy! I think I’m gonna pee myself!”

Mandy paced the edge of the crowd of teens that encircled them and the car in the middle of the parking lot, smiling around a nose running red rivulets and staring down Radner as she clambered to her feet.

“You just can’t shut your fucking mouth and mind your own business, Bitch! But don’t worry, when I’m done with you, you won’t be laughing any longer,” Amy spat in her direction, blood spraying from her lips like a red sprinkler system. She kind of sounded like she had a lisp with the missing tooth and all, and Mandy smiled even wider, eyes crinkling up at the corners and inciting an even greater rage within Radner. 

“I’m terrified,” Mandy announced, lips curled up and teeth running red as she chuckled, waving Radner over, “C’mon, bring it on then, Bitch. You gonna talk all day or do something?”

Amy screeched, full on sprinting at her, trying to tackle her to the ground once again, but Mandy pranced out of the way at the last minute. Radner slammed into the driver’s side door of her car, and Mandy pushed her back into it as she tried to recover, kneeing her in the stomach, and making her fold over on herself. Once she was bent, Mandy grabbed Radner’s mussed hair, yanking and running her head into the side window of her car.

Mandy felt a euphoric rush at the sound Radner’s cranium made when it smacked into the glass. It was so satisfying, she rammed her head into the glass a second time, relishing the clanging sound it made. And then she got an even greater idea, so she slammed her forehead into the glass again, harder this time. She was going to break that fucking window with Amy Radner’s face, and it was going to be so good. Too good. She did it three more times, the glass exploding around her arm as she stuffed Amy’s head into the window for the last time. She got snagged on some broken glass as she jerked her arm out, letting Radner hang out of the window, ass out and gurgling with each breath.

Mandy stepped away from her handiwork, wiping her face with her bleeding arm unthinkingly as her breath rasped out raggedly from between parted lips. Someone grabbed her from behind, and she struck out with a heel as her feet left the ground, a boy she didn’t recognize falling to the floor with a groan and grabbing his groin, before another tried grabbing her right arm. She really didn’t like that they were trying to contain her. She struck out again, her left fist meeting the boy’s face as if she was fluffing a pillow, and that didn’t satisfy her, so she whacked him again, twice in quick succession, letting him crumple to the ground to lay pathetically with his accomplice. 

She turned back to Amy Radner’s form just as she yanked herself out of her car, glass flying everywhere. Walking disjointedly from the car door in two steps, Amy collapsed to the floor unceremoniously before her feet. Mandy leaned over her, kicking her over so she turned to lay face up.

“You really done, Honey? I’m still laughing! Aren’t you gonna get up?!” Mandy called out maniacally, goading as she sniffled and tasted blood, “C’mon, Amy, I’m still fucking laughing. Don’t you got anything else for me?”

Amy blinked up at her dazedly, glossy eyed, and Mandy laughed so hard at the look she was sporting that blood bubbled out of her nose as she snorted. It was horrifyingly unattractive, and she wiped her hand along the lower part of her face, trying to swallow down the metallic substance in the back of her throat. Mandy turned to walk away, leaving Amy to the deadly silent crowd, who all stared to them with wide eyes. 

“Fuck you, Bitch,” Amy slurred out around a subtle lisp and a now swollen lip. Mandy paused, whipping around and grinning as she pounced back on her.

“Fuck me?!” Mandy parroted indignantly, placing her boots on either side of Amy’s prone form as a sudden wave of fury over took her. She pointed down at Radner, crouching down to scream, “Fuck me, huh?! How about no, Bitch! Fuck you!!”

Mandy dropped to her knees on either side of her, swinging her arm down on her face, right between her eyes. She was going to knock some fucking sense back into her, if anything. So really, she was doing Radner a favor by beating her ass. The second to eighth punches were in such quick succession that Mandy felt more like she was angrily knocking on a door rather than trying to knock Radner out. With one last punch, she realized why, Radner was completely knocked out, her eyes rolling around in her skull like a tacky Kit-Cat clock with each punch. 

Breathing hard, Mandy paused in her actions, her brain finally catching up with the rest of her as she was hit with the sudden sensation of total hollowness. Her gaze slid to the boys on the floor, making sure they were both out of commission, before sliding back to Amy Radner’s unconscious form. They must have known each other if they had come to her rescue.

Peering up at the crowd and spotting the faces of all the people she knew, Mandy realized with a calamitous amount of clarity that not a single person had stepped up on her behalf. She was hit by a car, and not a single person stepped in. Nobody even tried to stop Radner when she was pinning her half-unconscious form to the ground and wailing on her. Except Eleven, the ghost girl in her head, and really, that made it seem so much more terrible.

She thought maybe she should cry or scream, but she just couldn’t. Her body was weightless, and her head was dumbstruck, and she felt nothing. Not sorrow, or betrayal, or anger, or pain. She felt nothing of any sort, and even the crowd around her felt like nothing at all to her. They were one collective knot of colors, and sights, and the ringing silence that encapsulated the moment. Emotions were so far away from her in the moment, even Billy Hargrove seemed to be muted in her head. Her eyes locked onto him from across the crowd, and his mind seemed like a ghost of what it usually was. It bothered her—she had no clue as to why, but it did. 

When Mandy rose to her feet, it must have been the most graceful she had ever been. She was so acutely aware of herself that she felt like she stood ten feet tall. Everything about her was magnified, so much clearer than it had ever been before. Blonde hair that was golden in the afternoon light, celestial blue eyes rimmed in blacks and mottled purples, and lips painted the bitter type of red that made the rest of the world cringe—she was so monstrous and beautiful that everyone around her couldn’t decide whether to stare or look away. It felt like being reborn, or maybe like being unearthed after spending too many years hiding away from the world. She was her barest, and the world was in awe.

The spell was broken when she stepped over Amy Radner’s unconscious body, boots crushing broken glass underfoot as she moved to gathered her belongings. She walked around the front of Radner’s Pinto and yanked her bag out of the grill, hearing a tear, followed by all the items in her bag tumbling out. So much for being graceful. The world spiraled down onto her in that moment, everyone’s silent awe turning into squawking disbelief. _Have you heard—? Can you believe—? Did you see—?_ Everyone’s minds were in a tizzy, and Mandy sighed, her own mind settled into quietness. She crouched, stuffing as much as she could back into her bag, lugging it up and grasping it by its injured side. Then she spotted the rabbit’s foot on her key fob underneath Amy’s car, and knelt down, reaching behind a tire and snatching it wordlessly. 

Standing, Mandy ignored the people that swarmed around her to gather by Radner’s side, checking for any sign of life, and turned in the direction of her car. Nobody tried to stop her, but Carol appeared before her, eyes glazed and mouth pinched for a moment, seeming to contemplate something. Mandy couldn’t hear her mind, so she had no idea what she was planning to say, and it seemed to be that she would never know, because Carol decided against whatever she was going to say in the end, shying away from her and stepping out of her path. The expression that Carol’s face contorted into as she wove around Mandy seemed incredibly out of character. She had never seen her frenemy look that shaken before, and it occurred to her, as she opened her car door, tossing her ruined book bag in the backseat, that she was the one that put that look of fear on Carol’s face.

_Good,_ her wicked mind whispered.


	5. Roses are Red (Get out of My Head)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It gets weirder, trust me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my anxiety has been kicking my ass, so i've been 110% more productive than usual lol I planned to have this posted by like thursday but it's tuesday today and I'M JUST GONNA POST IT SO I CAN STOP EDITING IT lmao good news is I've hopefully proofread this chap to HELL AND BACK 
> 
> also, slight spoiler warnings maybe??? if you haven't watched through season 2 you might encounter the literally vaguest spoilers/references in this chapter but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ you do you, Kiddos. It won't really matter either way, there's nothing directly from the show b/c I just cannot stand having to give a play-by-play of a show/book/whatever like we all saw it, right??? lmao
> 
> ANYWAY, I can't tell if I wrote Billy out of character??? y'all tell me :)))
> 
> ***and more importantly, how did I write Max??? lol the kids are so much harder for me to write ;___; ehdsajsdabjkbdsafffCCUk

Red was her color. The world could be technicolored all it wanted, but in Billy’s mind, red was hers from that moment on. It looked too good on her to belong to anyone else. She was vibrant and wicked and soft all together, and she was _red_. That was all there was to it. 

Shoes crunching on broken glass, Billy stopped in place, squatting down and snatching the glinting gold bracelet he knew belonged to Mandy Mueller. It laid lifelessly, clasp broken, but diamonds still glittering brighter than all the glass shards it was settled with. For as much as he hated the way she jingled everywhere she went, the feeling that rose up in him when he watched a piece of her jewelry clatter to the floor was not exactly a good one. He pocketed it quickly, the piece of jewelry finding home with another belonging of Mueller’s that rested within the deep pockets of his leather jacket. 

He stood, glancing around and spotting Amy Radner sitting up while tentatively trying to touch her face. The girl kneeling beside her stopped her with a hand on her wrist and a shake of her head. Billy turned his back when he saw her glance his way, making his way away from the scene and towards his car.

“Holy shit,” Becky Chapman breathed as he met her beside his car, and Billy said nothing, expecting her to continue. She didn’t. They both got in the car, and drove down into the middle school pick-up.

It was when they finally pulled into the junior high parking lot that Becky spoke again, seeming to finish her train of thought, “Mandy Mueller just got hit by a c-car. A-an actual car, Billy!”

“Yep, I was there,” Billy nodded, one hand on the wheel while the other pulled out a cigarette, slipping it between his lips and lighting it while Becky stuttered and mumbled to herself. The girl was a little dumb, but that wasn’t exactly the worst thing a girl could be in his opinion. Although, if she continued to stutter all the time after this incident, it might become an issue.

“A-and then…” Becky trailed off, voice cracking, “Amy—she wanted—she beat her up! All over you leaving her!”

Billy smirked at that, ego preening under the implications that could be drawn from the incident. If he wasn’t hot shit before, he certainly was now that a girl nearly killed someone over losing him. He shrugged a little, breathing out some smoke as he peered out of the windshield, “Yep, I was there. I heard everything you did.”

“A-and—and then…” Becky continued her stunted speech pattern, bumbling for words, “Mandy just—just got up! L-like…”

“Like it was nothing,” Billy finished, rolling down the windows as he parked. He distantly spotted the obnoxious orange head of his stepsister as she made her way towards the car with a scowl on her face, “Yep, I was there. I saw.”

He definitely saw. His mind replayed her laugh like a broken record. The image of her breaking a car window with another girl’s face was seared into his memory. He hadn’t ever seen a girl do something like that before. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever see it again, either.

“She just got up,” Becky repeated in a terrified whisper, “All covered in red.”

Billy looked over to her then, seeing the far away look in her eye before agreeing in an equally hushed voice, “Yep. Red all fucking over.”

“You’re late,” Maxine interrupted the duo’s contemplative moment, her voice so grating that Becky Chapman and her weak heart jumped sky-fucking-high. Becky clutched at her chest, releasing a strained meep that had Max leaning in the driver’s side window and looking over to her with knitted brows. The younger girl looked between Billy and Becky, eyeballing them with cautious skepticism, “Is… _something wrong?_ Did something happen?”

Billy hopped out of the car as he avoided answering the question, snatching her bag from her limp grip, and tossing it in the back of the car, gesturing for her to get in, “C’mon, get in.”

“Well?” Max looked to him expectantly, “What happened?”

“Someone almost died,” Becky whispered out in a horrified rasp, and Billy rolled his eyes and leaned with a single hand against the hood of his car as Max bent over to look to Becky with wide eyes.

“Uh, what?” Max stood straight, eyeing him from the corner of her eyes with obvious distrust, “Did you almost kill somebody today?”

What a bitch, honestly. Could she kindly keep her blatant disapproval of him to a fucking minimum when they were around people? Just because she didn’t like him didn’t mean he was a fucking serial killer, Jesus! He wasn’t really wanting to deal with her snotty attitude on a day like today. The irritating little shit she was being at the moment made him want to punt her ass across the tri-state area.

“Get in the car,” Billy called out with clear warning in his tone, before he bent over her and drawled out a nasally and annoying, “ _Maxiiiine._ ”

Max crossed her arms, looking up at him defiantly, “Tell me what happened first.”

“Mandy Mueller got hit by a car,” Becky answered, hand against her mouth like she had just let a secret slip out, “Like, just now.”

“Who?!” Max asked, expression pure bewilderment, “Who did you hit with your car?!”

Billy grunted out irritably, “I wasn’t the one that ran her over, Dumbass.”

“What?!” Max practically jumped, more shocked than she ought to have been at finding out he wasn’t the one to run someone over. Little bitch, “Then who did?”

“Amy Radner,” Becky announced, before muttering under her breath, “Oh, my God. I can’t believe I’ve been best friends with a cold-blooded killer this whole time. How have I survived?”

“Amy?” Max questioned, brows rising even higher as she recognized the name, eyes shooting between Billy and Becky with equal amounts of befuddlement for both persons, “ _Amy-Amy?_ As in the Amy that rode to school with us before?”

Billy nodded, sucking a breath through his cig and releasing it from his nostrils as he looked away from the accusing look Max shot him, “Yup.”

“Oh, my God!” Max shouted at him, eyes wide and condemning, “Billy!”

“Yeah, I fuckin’ know!” Billy shouted back, waving his arm to hurry her into the car, “Now get in the fucking car, unless you would like to fucking live in this parking lot for the rest of your goddamn life, Maxine!”

Max shook her head out, clambering into the back of the car with Billy hopping into the driver’s seat once she was settled. She leaned her head between the two front seats, eyes still wide as she looked between Billy and Becky, seeming to wait for someone to start story time. Billy heaved a breath and started the engine, putting the car in gear and reversing out of the parking lot with squealing tires. Becky turned in her seat towards him, craning her neck in Max’s direction.

“Well? Someone tell me what happened!” Max exclaimed, waving her arms around when nobody spoke, tacking on a quick, “Please!?”

“Uh,” Becky began, gaze darting between Billy and Maxine, before finally settling on Billy as she spoke, “I don’t know.”

“What?” Max asked, craning her neck in Becky’s direction and looking to her with squinty eyes, before turning to Billy with a single palm gesturing in Becky’s direction, “What does she mean?”

“I guess she means that she doesn’t fucking know, Maxine,” Billy bit out from around his cigarette, “Jesus Christ!”

“Well, who the hell is Mandy Mullen anyway?” Max asked, and Billy sighed at her dogged refusal to let the subject go. He just wanted to forget about it at the moment. It was all too fresh in his head—Mandy’s blood stained face and wild grin made his mind conjure images of well-fed wolves with bloody muzzles, her ringing cackle had been like lightning striking through him, and watching her stagger to her feet after it all had his insides stirring in a way that was both awful and glorious all together. He relished it, and resented it. He couldn’t tell if he was love-sick or repulsed. It didn’t really matter, either way. He knew he still wanted to fuck her.

“Mandy Mueller,” Billy corrected without pause, and Becky nodded along.

“Okay, so who the hell is she and why did Amy hit her with her car?” Max demanded, sounding like a prepubescent police investigator with all her inane questions. It was so irritating. Not a single part of his stepsister was quiet—everything from the color of her hair to the tone of her voice just trumpeted her existence. He could never just ignore her and hope she’d shut up. Shit would never work.

“Mandy Mueller goes to school with us,” Becky answered, and Billy nodded to confirm the fact, “She’s kind of a bitch, but I don’t think she tries to be. I think it might just be her personality.”

Billy snorted at her words, smirking to himself as he kept his eyes on the road. Yeah, Queenie was a bitch all right. A bitch who looked too damn good in her jeans to ever be fucking trusted, who loved to rev him up and leave him high-and-dry, and who he wanted more than ever after seeing the way she laughed as she kicked Amy Radner’s ass. She might have been the only thing he wanted anymore, and it had him a little fucked up in the head, honestly. He knew there was something wrong with him when he spotted her busted lip as she rose to her feet, staring right at him, and all he could think was that he wanted to grab her face and lick at her bloody mouth until she opened up for him and gave him everything she had.

Billy cleared his throat, squeezing the steering wheel a little too tight and stepping on the gas pedal with a heavy foot, “She’s the high school’s queen bee out here, apparently.”

“Oh,” Max rose her brows at him, completely unaware of his inner turmoil, “And Amy tried to kill her?”

“Well,” Billy began, feeling like he needed to clarify the technicalities of the situation just to give Radner the benefit of the doubt, and also, to try to distract himself from the pictures flashing in the back of his mind, “She did hit her with a car, but it was in a parking lot, so she wasn’t going that fast.”

Becky made a startled gasp at his words that had him doing a double-take in her direction, “She definitely wanted to kill her! Or at least cripple her! She didn’t even brake or anything. Just sped right through her. Sent her flying over the car and everything.”

“Holy shit,” Max breathed, “Is she okay?”

“Don’t fucking curse around people older than you,” Billy reprimanded, looking back at her and gesticulating with a single hand, “I don’t need anyone accusing me of being a bad influence, got it?”

“Fine,” Maxine sneered back brattishly, “You curse all the time, though.”

“What’d I just say? _People older than you_ , didn’t I? You’re not older than me and therefore exempt,” Billy explained in a tone that was becoming increasingly elevated, his blood already running hot, “Now shut the fuck up back there.”

“But—!” Max began, looking wordlessly outraged.

“ _But—!_ ” Billy interrupted Max in a high pitched imitation of the younger girl’s voice, eyeing her in the rearview mirror willfully, “But fucking what? That’s it. That’s the story. Mandy Mueller got hit by a fucking car and good fucking luck to her.”

“Well, she did wail on Amy Radner after,” Becky chimed in, wanting to keep the conversation going for some inexplicable reason that made Billy look at her with raised brows and barely restrained indignation. Becky rose her brows right back, sweet honey eyes wide at the look Billy was giving her, “What? It’s true. She kicked her ass after the whole car thing. Broke out a window and everything. It was like a scene out of The Terminator. I was terrified.”

“Wait,” Max held up both her hands, as she paused, thinking, “Are you telling me she was ran over and got up after? And then beat up the girl who ran her over? Holy shit! That’s crazy!”

Billy scoffed loudly, voice rising in incredulity, “Hey, what’d I just fucking say to you?!”

“I know,” Becky agreed, speaking right over his outburst and nodding her head in firm agreement, “I don’t know how I’m ever gonna talk to her again. How do you look someone in the eye after you see them do something like that?”

“What a total badass!!” Max exclaimed, deciding to ignore his scolding as well. Waving her arms excitedly, her head bobbed between looking at Billy and Becky, looking for any change in their expressions with her curtain of red hair swaying around her shoulders, “Oh, my God. Are you friends with her?”

“She’s a real bitch,” Billy explained with a despairing shrug of his shoulders as he tossed his cig out of the window, “I’m nearly positive she doesn’t have any friends at all. Nobody wants to suffer her bitchiness.”

Except maybe him, but Billy kept that to himself. In fact, some awful part of him loved her bitchiness. Nothing was better than when she gave the world those cold angry eyes and got mouthy. It kind of made her fun.

“Well, her and Harrington were close in the past,” Becky shrugged dully, and Billy’s gaze darted to spy Becky from the corner of his eyes, attention grabbed, “But I think that’s because they’re neighbors. Or I guess as close to neighbors as rich people can be.”

Billy had no idea what the fuck any of that meant. Becky was giving very strong vibes of alluding to something, but he couldn’t be sure. Like, did the rich kids have a clique or something? He was struggling to decode her statement, and then he gave up, realizing she may have meant positively nothing with her words. She was, after all, an idiot about ninety percent of the time. 

“What?” Max retorted, eyes narrowed in her direction, and for once Billy was glad he didn’t have to suffer alone through being confused by the weird shit people in Hawkins said. 

“Well, the bigger houses out here have a lot of property, so richer people don’t really live that close to each other,” Becky explained, eyes trained on Max’s scrunched up face. 

“So she’s rich?” Max rubbed her chin thoughtfully, and Billy wasn’t surprised she clung to those words. His stepsister was a clever little goblin—it was part of what made her so dangerous, she couldn’t be lied to or tricked—and he could tell her little head was trying to puzzle together the mystery that was Mandy Mueller. Good luck to her, because she was going to fucking need it.

“Yeah,” Becky shrugged in response, thinking the conversation had drawn to a close and turning to face forward in her seat, until Max inquired.

“Is that why Amy hit her with her car? She was jealous?” Billy furrowed his brows at her words, eyes flashing warningly in Becky’s direction.

“We don’t know,” He responded quickly, eyeing Becky and her big mouth from dangerously narrowed eyes. Becky rose her brows innocuously in reply, before turning to look out of the window in hopes to avoid any more of the interrogation that was taking place within the vehicle. Billy rolled his eyes, sighing and wringing the steering wheel as he continued driving home.

“Well, why else would she try to kill her? What else do high school girls fight about?” Max asked aloud, and Billy could see the exact moment she answered her own rhetoric in her head, eyes lighting up and single index finger raising before she exclaimed, “Oh, or a boy!”

And then she paused, a small gasp leaving her, before her head was turning in his direction imperceptibly, eyes so wide they could have rolled right out of her head.

“No!” Billy denied before she could even accuse him, and he sounded so culpable he could have just beat himself over the head, “I had nothing to do with it!”

Max looked at him, pursing her lips and nodding her head wordlessly. _Yeah,_ her intelligent eyes said, _you did have something to do with it, Billy._ He fucking hated that look on her face. He just hated her so much. She was such a little know-it-all bitch, and every time she reminded him of that, it incited a vicious rage within him.

“I didn’t! So shut the fuck up about it already!” He turned up the radio, getting another cigarette and sticking it between his frowning lips as he flicked at his lighter. It wouldn’t light no matter how many times he tried, and he gave up with a grumble, tossing it on the dashboard and folding his cigarette in half until it ripped, before flicking it at the dashboard with such force it bounced up into the windshield and rebounded right back into Chapman’s face. What a trick-shot. Any other time, he might’ve laughed, but now he was aggravated and too worked-up over being exposed by his wise-ass stepsister.

Becky startled when the tobacco flew into her face, saying nothing further about his small hissy-fit as she tossed the shredded item from the window.

Max looked too victorious in the rearview mirror as she eyed him knowingly, so he pumped the brakes, watching her face smack into the back of the his seat with a, _“Shit!”_

“Hey!” Billy called out as Max righted herself, scowling and rubbing at her nose still, “What’d I fuckin’ say about that, Shitbird?”

Max sneered at the back of his head, Billy watching her the whole time thorough the rearview mirror as she rolled her eyes and muttered jadedly, “Yeah. Don’t curse, I got it. Watch the language, don’t make you look bad. _I got it._ ”

At her yield, Billy nodded, deciding his anger could be stashed for the meantime.

* * *

School was becoming a bore without Mandy Mueller around to harass. He tried picking on Steve Harrington a bit more, but it just wasn’t the same. Steve was soft; Billy pushed, and Steve dropped like a limp noodle. It was truly pathetic. He could at least look a little angrier about it, or something. There weren’t any fights or any fun to be had, and Billy’s head was gnawing away at itself in the desolation. 

No more jingle-jangle of bracelets or far way calls of _‘hey Mandy!’_ rang out on campus. He didn’t get to play any more games with her, and his time between classes was growing increasingly more tedious. She was fucking gone, and so was his source of entertainment. Nobody else could give him those angry eyes and mouthy remarks the way she could, and it might have been driving him a little insane. Her parking spot was empty every fucking morning, and it was distressing how keenly aware of that fact he was. He didn’t even realize how much she walked away from him—a swish of blonde hair, a peek at the curve of her ass, the lingering sweetness she left in her wake—and now that she wasn’t around, he even missed that. 

He had it bad. It was making him listless, and increasingly dumber by the moment. He needed something to sink his teeth into. His mind was running circles trying to catch its own tail. He was hungry for her, and he fucking hated it. Everything about her was so fresh and vivid in his mind. Her blood had dripped down her face and chest like a red veil, her gray-blue eyes had shone up at him like twin crystalline diamonds, and her howling laughter had awakened a sleepless beast inside him that he wished would just fucking give it a rest already. She was a lightning strike to his heart, a slow twisting torture right in his gut, and a spiderweb in his mind that caught his every thought. He wished it would stop. She was wild and beautiful, and so fucking perfect for him that it was nauseating. Literally, it made him want to puke.

Mandy Mueller hated him, he knew, and this new development was problematic. He had devoted himself to getting a reaction from her, and that was all well and good—that game was fun. Even if, in the back of his head, he had kind of committed to the idea of eventually fucking her, this was completely different. He was supposed to be too much for her to handle, and she was supposed to bend for him until he decided to break her. He wasn’t supposed to think the way she blew him off was sexy, and she wasn’t supposed to be immune to every trick he had. This was inevitable trouble. It was a bomb that was set and ticking, and he was an idiot who had no fucking clue how to diffuse it. He was fucked, and the only solution he could come up with was to simply ignore it. Ignore it and do something else. Play his music loud, and smoke too much, and push around the high school monarch, and fuck around with girls that were a shallow pool to her infinite depths, and pretend everything was normal. Pretend he didn’t like her, or miss her, or want her. 

It fucking sucked. The world around him was a dull, colorless lull without her, and he swore everyone else was at a loss with him.

Even Tommy had something to say on the matter once they pulled into the gym locker room and began pulling off their sweaty clothes.

“I think Mueller might be dead,” Tommy announced as he got under the shower spray beside Billy, “I’ve heard some spooky shit about people walking away from crazy accidents and then just dying in their sleep the very same night. I’m starting to think that actually happened to her!”

“She’s not dead,” Another guy announced from around the corner, voice reverberating off the tiles, “You need to be more worried about Radner. People couldn’t even get her to say her own name after she got her ass kicked.”

Billy whipped his head around at the disembodied voice, before shouting up at the ceiling in an echoing call, “Nobody fucking asked! Thanks, Asshat!”

“Some people just can’t mind their own business,” Tommy announced plainly as he scrubbed his armpits with a bar of soap.

“I’m just saying,” The boy called out in reply, “You haven’t seen either of them since Tuesday, right? At least Mandy could stand on her own.”

“She was hit by a car,” Steve Harrington stepped into the stall beside him, turning on the faucet and grimacing at the initial cold spray. He could have turned the shower on before stepping into it and spared the world the stupid expression, Billy thought. Steve really was an idiot, “But yeah, she’s not dead. I just saw her getting her paper this morning with a neck brace on. She looked like the Michelin tire man.”

Billy chuckled at the imagery, allowing the warm water to slide over his tense shoulders, Tommy’s booming cackle following after as he glanced to Steve’s open expression, “No way.”

“Yeah,” Steve nodded soberly as he began to lather his hair, “She flipped me off when I tried to stop and ask her how she was.”

A round of laughter emitted from the boys in the immediate area, and Billy could resist ribbing him a little.

“Get your feelings hurt, Princess?” He sneered pettily, and Steve rose his brows to him, laughing in a mocking way that had Billy miming along with him.

“I’m just saying,” Harrington shrugged off the jibe, “It was the only reason I knew it was her for sure.”

That garnered more chuckles, and Billy glanced around, trying to figure out just how many people knew Mandy. She seemed to be a fixture at school as That One Bitch. It was both humorous and intriguing, given she was so withdrawn with him for the first week or so he had been in Hawkins. He couldn’t tell if she just kept to herself, was constantly sought after, and annoyed by the fact, or if she was shy with him in their earlier encounters—she didn’t seem like the blushing type, so he would probably bet on the former. Which, Billy realized then, must have meant he wasn’t the first person to beleaguer her for attention. That left an oddly sour taste in his mouth. He was just one of many, apparently.

“Good ole Manic Mandy,” Someone sighed with feigned wistfulness, “Long may she live.”

“She’ll be fine,” Another inputted, “She’s got nine lives. I heard she survived a fall from a second-story window and walked off like it was nothing.”

Billy and Tommy exchanged wicked smiles upon hearing that, pointing to each other in confusion.

“You?” Billy rose his brows, looking to Tommy with bemused accusation.

Tommy shook his head, “You?”

Billy only shook his head in reply, before both their eyes darted to Steve Harrington’s sudsy head. There weren’t that many people who saw her tumble from that window.

Jamie Morrow appeared then as if summoned by their combined suspicions, towel around his neck and expression bleak, “If Radner knew better, she would have hit Mueller with a goddamn train, not a fucking two-door. Mueller’s a godless lunatic, I really don’t know what Amy was thinking.”

Steve shoved his head under the spray of water as Tommy shrugged, continuing to lather his body, and Billy was the only one to address the shorter boy.

“I think she was thinking Mueller broke us up,” Billy announced drolly, mocking the bleak expression on Morrow’s face.

“Did she?” Steve asked, head appearing from around a shower head.

“Obviously,” Tommy shrugged, answering before Billy even had a chance to speak, “She’s the kiss of fucking death when it comes to relationships.”

Billy couldn’t believe their interaction, and made a face, “Do you call one date a relationship? Give me a fucking break, man. You queers also stay up at night and gossip while painting your nails?”

“Hey,” Tommy put his hands up in surrender, “I’m just saying. Shit’s goin’ pretty alright for me where I’m at with Carol. She’s an animal, I’m never in short supply of pussy. And Mandy has an official track record. I mean, look at what happened to Steve! I wouldn’t want to risk giving her the benefit of the doubt.”

Steve grunted his displeasure at his own failed relationship being brought to topic, and Billy smirked deviously in his direction.

“Don’t bring my relationship into this,” Steve grumbled, “Me and Nance are working things out…”

Steve trailed off, and Billy could hear the helpless ‘I think’ that went at the end of the statement just from Harrington’s tone. It was almost unbelievable to Billy that this was the guy everyone drooled over in Hawkins. 

“She ran off with fucking Byers! _The Freak’s brother!_ ” Tommy exclaimed emphatically, turning off the shower and grabbing a towel, “Tell me you’re joking, man!”

Billy looked between the two boys, brows raised as he awaited Steve’s answer. Because, yes, it was really fucking pathetic that Harrington was running back to a girl who had just run off with some other guy, but Billy sort of wanted to try and understand his reasoning. As far as he knew, Nancy Wheeler was bookish and hardly worth a second glance. The girl hunched her shoulders sometimes, and it was really off-putting to Billy. But maybe she had a magic pussy, or gave crazy head, or something. He wasn’t sure. What the fuck did he know, anyway? Not much around here. He kind of wanted Steve to tell him, though.

“She’s my girlfriend,” Steve replied, and Billy deflated a little, turning his attention away from the conversation with a subtle roll of his eyes. He was officially done. He scrubbed himself down harshly, already over Tommy and Steve’s girl-talk. Why the fuck had he even thought he was going to hear something interesting from Steve Harrington of all people? Fuck, he was getting dumber the longer he existed in Hawkins, Indiana. This place really sucked balls.

“Well, you might wanna try telling her that, man,” Tommy laughed, “She’s running around with Byers now. You should just dump her and move on.”

Or stay hung up, Loser, he thought bitterly. Billy really hated Steve. He was a total limp-dick. Billy was ready to sic himself on the nerdy Nancy Wheeler just to see what the fuck was so amazing to Harrington. He imagined whatever she had between her legs must have been fucking mystical, because everything else he saw of her was completely sad and unremarkable. 

With a swat to the knob, he switched off the shower, leaving the two friends with a parting, “Alright, Cupcakes, I’m just gonna leave you two to your girl-talk.”

He heard another set of feet depart from the shower after him, and noticed Tommy at his heels when he peeked behind him.

“He’s a lost cause,” Tommy explained with a shrug, “There’s no point.”

No shit. Was there a point to anything in this town? It didn’t fucking feel like it anymore.

* * *

“Hey, Billy!” A girl greeted him as he opened his locker and tossed his books in it. He looked to the girl with raised brows, eyes perusing her form from the top of her head, down to her feet, and the distance back up to her eyes. He didn’t see much. She was a brunette who wore a sears sweater and her mother’s denim, and he was positive that if he ever saw her again, he would still have no clue who the hell she was, “Is it true you and Mandy Mueller are a thing?”

His brows rose even higher, “Has someone been saying we are?”

Because that was dangerous for him. He refused to be tied down to Mueller. He had a date on Friday with Becky Chapman, a girl he was positive was going to put out for him, and he refused to have a MIA Mandy Mueller cock-block him. The girl was already fucking him up in every other way possible, and he refused to let her fuck up his ability at getting pussy, too. Honestly, how the hell did she ruin him without even being present? It infuriated him. Bitch was too powerful, and he needed to do something about it.

“Oh,” Sears sweater said, “It’s just something I heard, but I also heard that you were going out with Becky Chapman, and I had to check. Becky is super nice, y’know? And I wouldn’t put it past Mandy to take another girl’s boyfriend.”

He really didn’t need all the exposition, “She hasn’t even been at school.”

“What?” Sears sweater’s face contorted into vague confusion.

“Mueller,” Billy shrugged, gesturing around him with his raised hands, “Isn’t she bedridden or something? She was hit with a fucking car, remember? How could we even be a thing?”

Also, on that note, how would one fuck a girl wearing a neck-brace? Billy suspected it would be awkward. A total mood killer, definitely. Ooh, but if he turned her over… Huh, that thought made him squint a little bit as he tried to imagine himself fucking a neck-brace wearing Mandy Mueller from behind. Well, it wasn’t the worst thought he’d ever had, but still awkward. If it was an option, he’d probably do it, but it’d probably be a six on a scale of one to ten. There were definitely better ways he could fuck her, for sure—all without a neck-brace, certainly. He wondered how long she would have to wear one. Would she be coming to school in one? He kind of hoped so. He imagined she’d be pissed about it. It would be too easy to tear into her.

“So you aren’t?” The girl and her sears sweater stopped his reverie short, and he frowned down at her. Like, fuck, couldn’t a guy just get a second to think?

“I’m not what?” He was so deep into his thoughts he completely forgot about she was talking to him about, but he conveniently remembered he fucking hated her ugly sweater.

“You and Mueller aren’t a thing?” The girl clarified in a slow, condescending tone, and Billy rolled his eyes. What a cow.

“No, not currently,” He replied drolly as he gave her a mocking simper, “Feel free to quote me.”

With a slam of his locker, he walked off. He really fucking hated the bitches in Hawkins, Indiana.

* * *

So, Billy Hargrove’s life was a total fuck up.

Even Tommy had heard the rumor that Mandy Mueller was involved with him, and the news had not boded well for him. Mandy Mueller’s name felt like a black mark branding him with her own shitty luck. He had thought that Becky Chapman would get a bit huffy about it, but she had simply laughed it off. It was nice to see a girl who was so easygoing about shit like that, but it also made him uneasy, because it was like he could still feel the impending demise of his date. 

He ended up being right about it, regardless of how hard he tried to will away his inevitable bad luck. He had to watch Maxine, and really, he should have suspected something was amiss when he couldn’t hear her existing in her loud manner on the other side of the wall. Probably shouldn’t have played his music as loud as he had, and probably shouldn’t have underestimated the little shit. To be fair, his mind was preoccupied with a lot of other bullshit, but still—should’ve saw it all coming. 

He had been getting in trouble for every single one of Maxine’s fuck ups, and he was fucking over it. She was a menace with a dumbass mother who refused to contain her—the little bitch did whatever the fuck she wanted with no consequences, and he was the one who got shit for it. It was bullshit.

When he pulled on his jacket and marched out of the house, he decided then and there, someone was going to pay. 

With each house on his little hunt, his anger built. He even went to the fucking Sinclair kid’s house, and had to play nice with a mother who sent him to the next home with very little ceremony. Apparently, all these little dweebs hung out at Nancy Wheeler’s house, and if he needed to find them, that was where they were. And here Billy thought Nancy Wheeler couldn’t get any lamer, only to find out that apparently her whole house was packed to the brim with a bunch of smelly, prepubescent nerds. He really could not find a single thing about her that was worth a damn. The more he learned about the girl, the lamer she seemed.

And then the door opened, and he saw what Harrington was onto. 

Nancy Wheeler’s mom was kind of a fox! Definitely top ten of the women over thirty-five he had encountered in Hawkins so far, and Billy was starting to think that maybe Steve Harrington was smarter than he led on. His bad mood settled on the back burner as he watched Wheeler’s mom melt in his presence. He felt like he was in a dream, and if it weren’t for the fact her husband was home, Billy was almost positive something would have happened. Actually, fuck the almost. Something would have happened. He would have made something happen with Nancy’s married mother, and he would have been remorseless. The woman clearly wanted him, and was obviously unhappy in her marriage. Or maybe not, but still, she definitely wanted him. Billy couldn’t really blame her.

If he didn’t have a soft spot for her before, he definitely did when she offered him cookies and gave him the directions to his little shit of a stepsister. She even drew him a map. What a gem. Her husband really didn’t appreciate her the way he ought to have. Fucking fool.

When he pulled onto the gravel path that wove its way along the edge of the woods and then came across Steve Harrington’s car at the end of the road like a fucking consolation prize, Billy had an idea of how it was all going to go down. This was going to get ugly, and he felt fucking great about it in the moment.

His smile was more teeth than lip when he stepped out of the car, and Steve stepped out of the house. And then, his memory was slightly hazy. He had really underestimated _King_ Steve Harrington. He saw a glimpse of the exalted boy he heard about at school, and knew he had to beat it out of him. One punch connecting was one too many, and Billy refused to be made a bitch out of. He had him down, and he wasn’t done—not by a long shot. And then the world was spinning on its axis, his whole body a glass balancing precariously before spilling over. He barely remembered the needle, only the look in Maxine’s eyes, and his own disgusting weakness, and then his horrible memories yelling those words at him: _Do you understand?_

He did, and he fucking hated it. He understood all too well. There were two types: top dogs, and bottom bitches. He didn’t like which category he was falling into in that moment.

He took the loss, struggling to remain conscious and choking on his pride, but he wasn’t fucking happy about it. Max really was a bitch—an alpha bitch, apparently—but still, a sneaky little bitch. He couldn’t believe she got him. She was bug-eyed and dopey, and her annoying little ass had managed to lay him out. The feeling knotting around inside him was a fucking awful one.

When he came back to consciousness, his mouth was dry and the world was still spinning. He needed to vomit, but his head felt like it was glued to ground, so he withheld. When he finally lifted his head, he forgot how to move his limbs, so he let his head slam back into the wooden floor. He was uncoordinated and half-conscious, and then, he wasn’t all of a sudden—his body jolting into action when he remembered the vague details of what had just happened. Fuck! His shitty little red-headed stepsister! He scrambled to his feet, steps heavy, before promptly knocking his shin into a splintered coffee table and stumbling. 

“Shit!” Billy exclaimed as he dropped face-first, his whole body too clumsy to stop him from slamming his face into the floor. He groaned, equal parts fury and dismay, _“Ffffffuck.”_

Fucking Maxine and her sneakiness. He knew she was too clever. Billy Hargrove had just beat the shit out of Steve Harrington, King of Hawkins High, only to be out-played by his thirteen year-old stepsister. What a fucking disgrace. No one could ever know. He would lie about it until he was blue in the face. 

He regained consciousness again as he was being dragged along gravel, each of his arms lifted by two different people, both struggling for breath. When his eyes fluttered open, they practically crossed when he spotted Mandy Mueller walking barefoot in his wake. His head jerked up as he squinted into the bleak night, and her bored expression morphed into one of subtle interest.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” He sneered, unable to believe his own eyes. Mandy Mueller eyeballed him silently, arms crossed over a silk camisole and shorts, and he smirked deliriously. He had to be seeing things. There was just no way a girl like Mandy Mueller would walk around barefoot in her pajamas. Regardless of how fuckable she looked in them, that just wouldn’t happen.

Her head cocked in the dim light, face shadowed as she loomed over him, and gold hair catching the light as if she wore a halo. He was gracelessly dropped to the ground by his handlers when they heard him speak, and his eyes ended up staring up at the starry blanket of the night sky. Assholes. 

Too many faces appeared along the edge of his vision, all wavy and contorted and circling around him, and he wanted to puke so much. He was sure he would feel exponentially better if he could just puke. 

“Is he awake?” A voice called from around him distortedly.

“Of course he is, Idiot! His eyes are open!” Another shouted, leaving his ears ringing.

“Billy?” A tentative voice questioned from his left.

“Hargrove, can you hear me?” Steve Harrington’s pulpy face appeared before him, and he wanted nothing more than to finish what he started. Harrington had such a punchable expression, “How many fingers am I holding up?”

A hand was waved in his face, and Billy’s eyes struggled to follow it, eyes rolling around in his head uselessly. 

“It’s three,” A voice announced dully right in his ear, and his head lolled to spy Mandy Mueller lounging beside him, hair sprawled around her and one leg crossed over the other, one phantom foot kicking into the air and right through Steve Harrington’s torso. Billy couldn’t even get away from thinking about her when his mind was half-gone, and he resented her so much for it. She smiled at him then, lips closed and eyes twinkling as she turned her face to his. She was pretty when she smiled, he thought idly, and he hated how much power she had just with her looks alone. Her smile grew, twisting up wickedly as she raised her brows expectantly, “Well? Aren’t you gonna answer him?”

“Three,” He croaked out, eyes still ogling Mueller’s phantom form and hoping that was not the answer to Harrington’s question.

“He’s with us!” Harrington called from somewhere above him, and Billy’s head heard three more warped echoes of his statement. 

She grinned, laughing and clutching her stomach as her dainty foot swung into the air above them, “Ha! No way! What the hell did they drug you with, huh?”

His eyes widened, his brows turning up. He had no fucking idea, but he was positive it was too much. He was yanked up, Mandy Mueller’s face disappearing out of his line of sight with a lingering glance of humored eyes as he was dragged to his feet. The world continued to spin around him as he teetered on jelly-like legs, knees wobbling pitifully. His head pounded like a hammer was whacking away at the back of his skull, pain bursting behind his eyes as colors pulsed in his vision, and he had to stagger away to vomit as his whole stomach lurched. A chorus of various sounds of disgust sounded from behind him.

“Can you really see me?” A voice asked quietly from beside him, and his eyes darted sideways to catch a glance of the girl of both his dreams and nightmares crouching beside him and leaning into view as he threw up his guts. Her curious blue eyes caught the light, and he stared into them unthinkingly, squinting just slightly when her brows shot up toward her hairline as she caught his gaze, “Can you?”

Another wave of nausea rocketed through him and he barfed right through her. She disappeared with a shriek, before reappearing in a plume of shimmering sparkles, standing with an unimpressed look on her face. 

“Ew, Hargrove,” She drawled, standing before him with her arms crossed and her hip cocked, “Don’t you have any manners? You can’t just vomit on a girl.”

God, even his own imagination was having an attitude with him. He couldn’t be like a normal boy. When Billy Hargrove imagined a girl, she didn’t show up naked and horny, she appeared like the fairy fucking godmother and shit-talked him. He was his own worst enemy, it seemed. Billy was positive his bad luck couldn’t get any worse. 

Mandy Mueller smirked down at him, “Hey, I thought that, too, and then I got hit by a car. Were you there? I don’t remember. Amy Radner’s never going to show her face in this town ever again, though. Hope you didn’t get too attached, Hargrove, ’cause she’s on the outs.”

Mandy Mueller’s cocky know-it-all tone was the worst thing he had ever experienced, and he groaned, clutching at his head, and then chuckled in the hysteria of the moment while mumbling incoherently, “Fuck—Shit—shut up already. I-I-I—I mean, uh, you’re not—no one is there. I can’t do this—fuck—I am _fucked_ up.”

His whole head felt like it had survived a blender, and he could feel his brain wobble around in his skull as he staggered to his feet disjointedly. Mandy straightened with him, and he could hear the jingle of her jewelry when she did. All the annoying twerps around him eyeballed him like he was a monster, ready to strike at any moment. A part of him relished in it, while the other part found the dumb looks on their faces super fucking annoying. Harrington’s busted face was between him and the kids, and Billy’s eyes settled onto Steve unblinkingly.

“Alright, man, it’s cool,” Harrington eased, placing a hand on his shoulder and guiding him sit back on the ground beside his car. Billy shrugged off the hand and plopped down onto his ass gracelessly, bringing his knees up, resting his elbows atop them, and hanging his head between his shoulders as he scrubbed a hand though the back of his hair, “You’re cool. We’re cool. Everyone’s cool.”

A noise of displeasure sounded from beside Steve, and only Billy seemed to be the one to hear it as his eyes turned to watch Mandy Mueller crouch down beside Steve’s form before him, her whole body turned towards Harrington. She tilted her head in Billy’s direction with a smirk as she addressed him, “Y’know, I agree with you for once, Hargrove. Steve Harrington is an overrated dumbass. Like, just look at him—can’t even see what’s right in front of him. Doesn’t even know I’m here! Ha!”

Billy swallowed down his retort as his eyes danced over her form, and she looked to him again, balancing on the balls of her feet as she squatted to his eye-level and cocked her head to catch his glossy-eyed, unfocused gaze, “You’re totally out of it, Honey. You’re probably gonna be sleeping this off for a few days.”

If he wasn’t sure before, he now knew for a fact that he was hallucinating. Mandy Mueller would never call him any kind of pet name after their last interaction. At least, not sincerely, and the warped version of her his mind was projecting was just _too_ nice. Mandy Mueller didn’t smile for him, or call him honey, or disappear and reappear in a plume of sparkly dust like a fucking fairy. Those drugs had really fucked up his head.

“Shut the fuck up already,” He growled out, waving a single hand around in what he hoped would be a commanding way as his vision swam. Mandy said nothing else, clear glowing eyes contemplative as she stared at him, and he couldn’t bare to even look in the general direction of her form. Steve seemed to think he was talking to him, and shifted on his feet uncomfortably. Billy found his voice then, words rolling out easier than before, “I’m fine, now get out of my fucking face.”

Steve didn’t need to be told twice, and hopped to his feet, stepping away from him. He heard the jangling of bracelets and knew that the imaginary Mandy Mueller was backing off as well. Billy sighed, hanging his head from the view of all the extra onlookers as he tried to gather himself, rubbing at his blurry eyes and trying to shake out his dizzying thoughts. He had to get it together. He could be a bitch when the world wasn’t staring him down, but now, he needed to pull his shit together. 

With a firm nod of his head, Billy pushed himself up to standing. He refused to look as wobbly as he felt, and dug his feet into the ground. Everyone around him held their breath, waiting to see what he’d do. He sneered at all of them, eyes sliding over each face before he finally reached the freckled face of his stepsister.

“We’re going,” He stated woodenly, “Say goodbye.”

She rosed her brows, and he heard a different jingling sound, realizing belatedly that she held his car keys in her hand. What the fuck? His brows furrowed down at his keys being enclosed by her small palm as he thoughtlessly patted at his empty pockets.

“You can’t drive,” She bit out, lips pursed as she stared him down, her eyes carrying a dangerous promise. He bit back his reply, and another voice sounded instead.

“She’s right,” The imaginary Mandy Mueller shrugged in his direction, “You might pass out at the wheel.”

He couldn’t believe the audacity of both females, even if one of them was made up in his fucking head. His nostrils flared. Fucking bitches, man!

“Then what the fuck do you suggest? You wanna walk home?” The angrier he got, the faster his weakness fled him, and his body filled up with something stronger.

“I’ll drive,” Max suggested, and two of her little friend’s whipped their heads around to gape at her. 

“She’s, like, ten,” Mandy announced, looking at him expectantly, “You can’t let her drive, Hargrove. That’s crazy even for you.”

“Yeah, alright! I know,” Billy squeezed his eyes shut as addressed the imaginary girl, “I get it, thanks. Now shut the fuck up already.”

Then he realized what he just said, and that was talking to figment of his imagination, and looked up in bewilderment. Maxine stood before him, smiling brightly, and Mandy lingered just behind her, looking both disappointed and amused as she hung her head and tried to hide her smile. Maxine jogged around to the driver’s side of the car, thinking his reply had been for her, and Harrington looked to him with a shrug.

“She’s actually not a bad driver. You’ll probably survive,” Steve announced, and Billy’s new imaginary friend cackled maniacally in response. Billy’s eyes slid to the side of Steve’s head and caught sight of the underdressed girl pointing in his direction as she bent over and clutched at her sides while howling with laughter.

“I cannot believe this shit!” Mandy screamed for nobody but Billy to hear, and he heaved a tired sigh. He couldn’t either, “It’s just too good!”

As he marched to the passenger door, Billy made sure to catch Harrington with a sharp shove from his shoulder. He got a small sense of satisfaction as Steve winced and stumbled back. Sedated or not, Billy Hargrove could still kick Steve Harrington’s ass. It felt good to have that fact reaffirmed.

He watched Max set the car to drive with fuzzy vision, his brows furrowing as the engine roared to life. She was too comfortable in the driver’s seat, and he hated it. The only upside to all of this was as they tore down the gravel road, he caught sight of Mandy Mueller’s apparition smirking at him and waving. Good fucking riddance, he thought as her form disappeared around the bend. For as much as he had missed her, his fucking head had to imagine the most annoying version of her possible under the worst circumstances possible. He didn’t need mouthy remarks and mocking words right now. He was too fucked up presently to want to play any games.

When they got home, both kids got out of the car and met around the front of it, right between the headlamps. Max held out his keys, lips pursed and looking ready to pick up where they left off, and Billy took them wordlessly, not wanting to be made a bitch out of twice in one night. They both marched up the front steps, opening the door to be met with Susan’s relieved smile and his father’s tight expression.

“What took so long?” He questioned, and Max looked up quickly, pulling away from her mother and looking up at her stepfather.

“I had to finish a science project,” Max responded evenly, seeming to already have decided on her lie. Billy rose his brows slightly, trying not to sway on his feet, and at least look like his head wasn’t floating away from him, “I was at a friend’s house working on it. It’s extra credit, and due on Monday, so I wanted to get it done tonight.”

“Oh, Honey! You have to tell someone before just disappearing like that! If not me, then at least Billy when he’s watching you, okay?” Susan said, hugging Max around the shoulders and looking at her pointedly, “Alright?”

“Yeah, of course,” Max nodded along, mother and daughter huddled together as they spoke, while Billy and his father eyed each other unhappily from either side of them. He knew his father had something he wanted to say about it, and Billy watched uneasily as he held his tongue. He wished he would just fucking say it. Maxine was a sneaky little bitch, and Susan was being played by her. Billy knew he was thinking it, knew he was waiting for a reprimand that would never come, and resenting his stepchild for that very reason. It was so painfully clear to Billy how different his upbringing was from Max’s. What the hell was wrong with Susan to be with someone like his father? Was she stupid or just deluded? 

“Thanks for coming to pick me up, Billy. I didn’t realize how late it had gotten,” Maxine smiled up at him, and all he could see in her smile was one big fat lie. His head was drowning in his resentment. Little bitch.

Billy’s brows pinched together as he sucked in a breath, exhaling a pained, “Of course, that’s what family’s for.”

A part of him died when the words left his mouth, but both parents in the room seemed to approve of the statement. His ego was crushed. He couldn’t take any more losses. It might actually kill him for good. He had to go to bed and sleep off the crushing feeling in his chest.

When they were dismissed, he was down the narrow hallway and nudging into his room with all the grace of a newborn calf. Max was at his heels, wide-eyed and looking unable to believe she had just gotten away with murder. Little shit. When he turned to close his door, she was there, mouth poised to speak, and Billy gave a her brief glare before slamming the door in her face. He heard a light huff on the other side before he heard her closing the door to her own room with a little more force than usual.

He dropped to the foot of his bed and kicked off his shoes, yanking his cigarettes from his pocket and tossing them onto his bedside stand as he tugged off his jacket. Letting his jacket drop to the ground before him, he heaved a broken sigh and rubbed at his face. 

“I think I like this look on you, Hargrove,” A voice spoke over the sound of his near quiet breathing, and he didn’t need to look up to see the girl he knew it belonged to.

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” He muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose and squeezing his eyes shut, “Why the fuck do I do this to myself?”

“Poor coping mechanisms,” She replied, boredom oozing from her voice, “Y’know, for the childhood trauma and all.”

He groaned, looking up to catch Mandy Mueller standing in all her glory as she turned on spot, looking at his barely lived-in room.

“Why am I still seeing you?” He grumbled, resting his elbows on his bent knees as he leaned forward, “How do I get rid of you for good, huh?”

“Forgive me for speaking out of turn, but your living arrangement is kinda odd,” Imaginary Mandy commented, glancing to him with a look of blatant suspicion, “I feel like I’m missing something.”

“Like what?” He humored his own delusion.

“Like,” She began, head cocked as she turned to face him with bright eyes and a wickedly perceptive look, “What happened to your real mom? I think I can take a guess, but you won’t give me anything solid. You don’t really think about her a lot. I think it’s 'cause it makes you sad, and you don’t like being sad, do you, Hargrove? I can’t really blame you, I guess. I’m a gross crier, too.”

He bit back a groan and settled with an exasperated chuckle under his breath as he rubbed at his itchy eyes, “I can’t do this right now.”

“Why not? You won’t give me an answer any other time,” She shrugged as she hopped onto his bed and jumped in place, the bed not moving at all as he watched her spring up toward the ceiling, “You’re just such a tightass, Hargrove. I knew that tough guy spiel was all an act, by the way. You’re too good looking to be so masculine all the time, honestly. I mean, you’re still a total psycho, but like, a cute one. Like if George Michael and Ted Nugent had a love-child, I guess. I once heard someone say that you kinda looked like Madonna could be your mom, but like, how rude is that? Even I’m not rude enough to say that aloud.”

“You’re not fucking real!” He growled, eyeing her dangerously as he watched her bounce around on his bed, before smacking the side of his head, “So shut the fuck up!”

She snickered, “Wow, so hurtful, Hargrove.”

“It’s the drugs,” He muttered under his breath, trying to will the girl away, “The psychedelic sedatives that little bitch injected me with. You are not real, and I just have to unimagine you, somehow.”

“Aw, I thought you said you fantasized about me all the time!” Phantom Mandy exclaimed sarcastically as she stopped bouncing on his bed to pout down at him, “Are you saying you lied to me? I think I’m gonna cry, Billy. I’m heart broken!”

“Ugh,” Was all he could reply as he grabbed at his head with one hand, while the other threw his discarded jacket across the room and right through the specter. She disappeared with a squeal, shimmering from existence and leaving him in the ringing silence that she left in her wake. 

He held his breath, eyes darting around the room as he waited for her to reappear. When she didn’t, he sagged with relief, before collecting his jacket and hanging it up. Afterwards, he began shedding himself of his clothes, shirt first, followed by jeans. He was half-way through wiggling his ass out of his jeans, when he heard her return.

“Woo! Take it off, Baby!” She catcalled mockingly, and he kicked his jeans off the rest of the way with barely contained rage. She was in the middle of gyrating and singing a vaguely sexual song at him when he turned on spot.

“Sure,” He smirked in the direction of his intrusive imagination, before pelting his jeans in her direction, making her dive onto the bed to avoid being hit. His belt buckle clanged against the wall, and he froze, wide-eyed, straining his ears to see if the sound stirred anyone. Nothing sounded from anywhere else in the house. Head poking up from its position flat on the bed, the imaginary Mueller looked to him with wide eyes.

“Hey! Did you try to get rid of me again?! Why?! You’re like the only person who even missed me this week! Talk about mixed signals!” She exclaimed as she hopped off the bed, and he turned back to his wardrobe, going through the motions of hanging all his clothes and looking for something to wear to bed. The weather in Indiana was fucking frigid, and he actually had to wear sweats of some kind to avoid freezing to death. It sucked, but what was new?

“Are you ignoring me?” She asked from over his shoulder as he began shucking on a pair of pants, “Ugh, so rude.”

He continued to ignore her, and she got huffy, loudly sighing and groaning as he grabbed a clean gym shirt. 

“Are you seriously not going to talk to me? After I came all this way to visit you? So ungrateful! Honestly, Hargrove! You torment me every moment you can, and the second I wanna talk you totally blow me off! Boys suck dick!” He turned back to face her as she shouted, head tossed back towards the sky as she stomped her foot in the middle of the room.

“Only the gay ones,” He retorted, eyeing her disdainfully. 

“Alright,” She agreed, “Gay ass.”

“Fuck you!” He retorted, and she snorted at his exclamation, “You’re not even fucking real!”

“I am too good to be true,” She agreed loftily, and he was seething.

“Go away! You’re not real! Get the hell out of my head for once!” He slapped at his head, watching as her brows scrunched up, “You stupid fucking bitch!”

He couldn’t fucking take it. She was red—vibrant and unmistakable and blaring. He couldn’t ignore her. She wouldn’t go away. He just wanted to be alone so he could fucking cry in peace, or at least lament over the shitty day, and the shitty week, and the shitty month, and the shitty move to this shitty town. He wanted to sulk and despair over the death of his entire life as he knew it.

His father was going to have a perfect life, and if that meant breaking Billy down to be something he could manage, then he was going to do it. He was a pile of rubble, his ruins ground up into nothing more than dust. There was nothing left in him that wanted to keep going. He didn’t know what to do anymore. Life was so fucking unfair; it tore him down, and tore him apart, and whenever he tried to find a reason to keep going, it made sure to take that, too. 

He missed his mom so much in that moment. She would’ve grabbed his face and told him to be strong, and he would’ve, because all he would have had to do was follow her lead. She was brave in the face of insurmountable odds, and when storms came, he swore even the thunder would tremble at the roar of her voice. She was indomitable, and she would have shown him how to get through. But she was gone, and shit was falling apart. Even his own fucking head was fucking with him, and it had been the last place he thought was safe.

Mandy looked at him, eyes dancing over his features and watching as he hung his head and tried to will her away with clenched eyes and hands clutching his hair. The phantom didn’t do anything except stare silently, eyes looking through him for a moment. She appeared so still, she looked like a silvery painting, and when he looked up at her, she slowly began to disappear.

“Alright, Hargrove, I get it,” She announced, nodding and giving him a slight smile as she faded into a silvery, glittery haze, “Next time be a little nicer about it, huh? I got feelings, too, Asshole. See ya Monday. Try not to miss me too much in the meantime.” 

He stared at her until she was nothing more than a shimmering mist, looking like concrete during a heat wave, all wavy and distorted. He closed his eyes, relishing the silence for a moment, before dropping back onto his mattress and glaring up at the ceiling.

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” He asked the silence, his voice a rasping whisper, before repeating it louder for his own ears, “What in the fuck is wrong with me?” 

Besides the obvious, anyway. It was abundantly clear that he was a fucking pussy who not only was hung up on a girl who hated him, but also just got fucking played by his little brat of a stepsister. Fuck his entire life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY so I avoided writing about billy's dad rdidbjkbdjhsbaskdjb SORRY GUYS like I know I could have gone full angst on it but like??? I'm trying to avoid sounding too aware of things b/c the 1980s might as well been the fucking dark ages when it comes to awareness/understanding and actually giving a shit about people. SoOOooOo y'all aren't gonna hear about billy getting his ass whooped from billy's perspective, sorry. Like as a child of abuse I can tell you that I never really felt bad for myself when I was beat, I just got angry??? so I probably wouldn't write billy's character like a sadboi (I wouldn't know how lmao heLP) that learns how to love people after someone coddles him or w/e. I'm so sorry guys omg I just want billy to be able to be a meanboi that learns his lessons the hard way and still enjoys the life he makes for himself and gets to be free and then just learns to be a better person through the power of friendship and also maybe a near death experience??????? lol vdjkbdjkbdws SEND HELP MY DUMBASS IS STUCK IN MY FEELINGS
> 
> also, as a sidenote: yes. Yes, I did make Billy's mom a bad bitch, lol. We all knew Billy Hargrove had a little bit of Bad Bitch™ in him.


	6. What Is and What Shouldn't Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is still weird. It's been weird for so long, it may just be normal at this point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, this chapter feels weirdly short to me, lol (EVEN THO ITS LIKE 5000 WORDS fvhjdbhjdbdhsjkbdskj). I had a whole bit with will byers in this (even named the chap after a david bowie song but had to change it b/c of this gr8 tragedy) BUT it felt really overwhelming in the middle of this chapter so I'm moving it to the next chapter (or the one after??? lol help) or I'm just gonna scrap it entirely b/c ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ its kinda plot important but also not _too important_. if it's missing, prob won't be a big deal or anything but IDK YET I'm working through it tbh
> 
> Anyway, I just wanted to get this out b/c I'm so flustered and grateful to the people who have left comments and kudos on this (and even bookmarked it lol brings my nerdy ass to tears every time T^T) even tho its my secret shame and all ;___; y'all are so beautiful and lovely, and you keep me motivated and I really appreciate you <3 Thanks, Lovelies!!

It was called astral projection. Mandy Mueller couldn’t throw a three-pointer or pitch a fastball, but she could separate her consciousness from her body. Sometimes it felt like she never had any hope of being normal.

The first time she noticed it on her own, she had just gotten home from the hospital. She had been hit by a car, spent the night under observation, and was packed up in the morning with a bottle of pain killers. When she got home, she was deposited into her bed and given a pill. Her mother pushed her hair from her face and smiled at her, telling her to rest.

She hadn’t even realized she fell asleep. One second, she was lounging against the pillows, and the next, she was standing on the ceiling with a dumb look on her face as she nudged the ceiling fan with her foot. It took her a moment to figure out what she was looking at, and her brows furrowed once she realized what she was kicking around. She looked up, catching sight of her earth-bound body snoring away above her. Except, she realized belatedly, it was actually below her. 

Her body had been covered in mottled purples and green-blues, her lip was busted and swollen, and both her eyes were blackened as she rested. Mandy kind of thought she looked like an extra from The Evil Dead. It was both ugly and painful to look at. Even more strange was the way her body glowed with a color somewhere between that of pink, apricot, lavender, and gold. She had never seen a color like that before, and it was tinged just slightly with a greenish hue not unlike the particularly ugly patches of her skin. Surely, she thought, that must have meant something.

It was odd, the world when she was outside her body. The day wasn’t as bright as it was golden, and the night wasn’t so much dark as it was gray and silver. The sun bathed the world in vibrant, glowing color, and the moon washed it all away every night for the sun to repaint it golden again with the coming morning. The walls to her room weren’t so flat, and the floor wasn’t so much the floor anymore—it was more of a suggestion. Doors meant little to nothing now, she didn’t need them. She was capable of anything out of her physical form. 

It was both distressing and exhilarating. She felt both fearless and terrified. She was unstoppable out of her human form—intangible and unable to be hindered. She was flowing water, or a breath of wind—unable to be clenched within a mere mortal’s grasp. She was beyond flesh and bone, and it struck a cord so deep within her, she couldn’t even begin to grasp the intricacies of it. Everything around her—that which could be seen with the human eye, and that which could not—was noticeable to her, and it sometimes blinded her. The constant cycle of birth, death, decay, rebirth had her head dizzy and her stomach rolling. 

The flowers bloomed for the bees; the bird ate the bees; the fox ate the bird; the bear ate the fox; and when it was all said and done, the fucking flowers bloomed all over again. It was the same for everything. Everything was a circle—a chain reaction of events that kept going and going until it was all back to where it started. It was all so purposeless, but also so full of promise. Her mind reeled, the longer she stared into the great vastness of the universe.

All the stars were a great, beautiful disaster that filled her with a warmth she hadn’t ever felt before. They were twinkling explosions—both lovely and horrific—and she hadn’t ever been more captivated. The universe was so large and so small altogether, and oh so wonderfully terrifying. Sometimes, when she went too far into the great pool, diving too deep into the sky, her whole being would vibrate, her non-existent bones rattling around in a way that felt like both a call for home, and a promise to never return. 

One time, she panicked when she got her call, and shrunk smaller than the size of a pin. She blinked into the inky world around her, confused. She was so tiny that even bugs were too large to make sense of. She had remembered the slides she had looked at in biology class, and the way those little organisms and their little phalanges worked to get them places. They had looked like they swam places, but as small as she was in the moment, it had not appeared to be so from up close. It was like a thousand hands reaching for her when she stared at the amorphous form. She honestly thought it might have eaten her, and she had popped away in an instant, the world flying by her in colors. She found herself above her body with a single blink of her eyes.

As she stared down at her mangled body, she recounted the magnitude of what she had seen. The universe was very large, she had known, but she had never been more truly frightened at the vastness of it all before seeing how microscopic everything truly was in nature. It all trickled down, seemingly unendingly. The flower and the bear, to the cell and the bacteria. It was all circular. To live, and to die, so life could thrive once again. Even the stars were guilty of it—their destruction was their birth. 

Mandy Mueller had never been more keenly aware of her mortality. 

She wished for nothing more than to see Eleven again—for something or someone to stop her from floating away time and time again. Eleven would have stopped her, Mandy knew. Would have probably asked her what it all meant, maybe, but would have definitely shepherded her off somewhere safe first. It didn’t happen, though—Eleven was missing, and Mandy floated off into the great abyss without care. Until one day, she came crashing down again, to a place she had only ever seen in her nightmares.

The Storm was a blackhole—both floating somewhere in the sky, and also looming just beneath the earth’s crust. Dark matter, Mandy reasoned, was a different, alien existence altogether. No morals, and no reasoning, and no sense, only the basic understanding of want. It wanted to consume. It was decay, and also the horrific reality of birth. It was ugly and rotten, and Mandy laughed in its face when she had encountered it in its dark womb. Mandy glowed effervescent, and the shadowy world around her shrunk in her presence, writhing tendrils and squealing mouths. She was bright like a fucking Christmas tree, and her fingers burned in the beat of her phantom heartbeat, and everything around her squirmed in reply. 

She got glimpses of fire, and trees, and screams of agony, and a strange woman’s face, and then an all-encompassing loathing. Steve Harrington was suddenly behind her eyes, distant and distorted, and she got visions of him pulling a scarf from around his mouth, sagging with relief as he announced, “Guys, we did it.”

The Storm swirled around her, roaring and howling from the darkened sky, and Mandy looked into the vast, inky shroud that loomed above her, smirking a little to herself as its shrieking call slowed. It was a wilting flower, and a curling up spider right before its final end. The hate and the want and the death surrounded her, and she could barely make sense of the magnitude of it—the world around her turning into a low, rumbling hum beneath her feet. The sound was so low and deep that it felt like the universe was spinning on a turn-table beneath her. It was dysphoric, and she didn’t like it. She made to leave, thinking of Steve Harrington’s warbling voice and a niggling mystery that needed solving. When she zapped from existence, she left like a lightning strike, scorching the earth in her wake.

She knew it would be back. It was death and decay, so of course, it would be birth once more. Everything was so fucking circular, after all.

* * *

Mandy Mueller was going back to the land of the living. Her father had thrown a fit with the school board, and paraded her around like a lame horse on its last leg for a whole week before he got his way. Amy Radner was expelled, never to return to Hawkins High. She was going to be shipped off to a group home for troubled girls, and Mandy almost felt a little bad. Almost.

They settled out of court, and the Radners left the meeting with hung heads and empty pockets. Mandy Mueller’s father was a big time lawyer as crooked and malicious as they came. He was a vicious attack dog, and when he sank his teeth into something, he locked his jaw and kept his hold. Those Radners never stood a chance, really, and Mandy almost felt a little bad. Almost. 

When they had walked from the building, he gave Mandy a wicked grin, and said, “Honey, how do you feel about a new car for Christmas?”

She smiled brightly in her father’s direction, face a little squished against her neck brace, “What kind of car, Daddy? A fast one?”

“Any car you want, Baby Doll.”

That sounded too good to be true, and she repeated in a dubious tone, “ _Any_ car?”

Her father laughed at her then, opening the car door for her and helping her into the seat as if she was truly crippled, “Any.”

“Hm, I’ll have to think about it,” Mandy announced in a contemplative tone as she struggled to find her seatbelt for a moment, before her father assisted her by handing her the strap. 

“Alright, Sweetie, you let me know,” He placated easily, watching her clip herself in with immense concentration.

“Alright,” He slammed her car door shut once she was settled. Mandy leaned back in her seat, thinking of what kind of car she wanted to buy. Finally, some of her pain and suffering was going to be worth something. What a thought.

A few days later, as Mandy stepped into her white cabriolet and started the engine, she thought about something red and zippy—something that screamed as it drove by. Mandy liked the idea of that. She put her shades on and took off down her winding driveway. 

The drive to school was too mundane, and her head ran away for a moment. Starbursts in the sky, and a million fiery explosions flashed in her mind as she drove down a singular winding road. The woods around her flashed by, sunlight spilling through their trunks in dancing streaks of gold. She shook out her head, trying to reign herself back in. The painkillers made her float away sometimes, and she’d find herself seeing visions of far away places without meaning to. All her astral travels were coming back to haunt her, and it proved the saying true to her: nothing came without a price.

Mandy needed a distraction—something to occupy her mind. Teen gossip, or math homework, or maybe Billy Hargrove’s rasping voice and smirking lips calling her Queenie. She needed something to tether her consciousness, a hand to hold her string to make sure she didn’t float off into the stratosphere like a lost balloon. More frequently than not, Mandy found herself disassociating herself from her flesh. It was terrifying, because her body was important—it was her home, and her life, and all the great plans she had yet to finish. And sometimes, she left her body, and just forgot about all of that. She hated it. It felt like she was her shadow rather than her own person. She needed to hear her name, for someone to just look at her and see her, and maybe, for someone to touch her and for her to feel it. It was such an ugly, shameful necessity in Mandy’s eyes, that she frowned out of the windshield as she pulled into the parking lot.

The world fell to a hush as she pulled into her usual parking spot, her car jerking slightly as she pulled up the brake. The minds around her were deathly silent, almost as if every thought itself was a whisper in the mind of its maker. _Holy shit,_ she could just make out through all the hissing disquiet, _Mandy Mueller is actually alive._ It was an amusing observation that she had heard before, and she smiled slightly when she heard it, even if she had spent the last week sore and feeling miserable about the whole situation. It felt good to be reminded she was still alive and kicking, at least.

She got out of her car in one sweep, her bag following her out and her car keys jingling in her grasp. Her hair swung over her shoulder as she turned, fanning out on her back like a cape of gold. She saw herself through all the watching eyes around her. Mandy Mueller stood tall and glowing—she looked too fucking good for a girl who was hit by a car the week previous. Her hair was perfectly windswept, and her makeup was immaculate. Her eyes were covered by a new pair of blackened sunglasses with circular, golden wireframes. Her bag was replaced with an even nicer one after its destruction, and she sported a new suede jacket that was worth more than the average mortgage payment in town. She was flawless, and everyone else thought so, too. Mandy basked in the silent awe of the people around her. It felt fucking great.

Eventually, it all tumbled down, though. Her mind caught images of angry yelling, of howling laughter, and her own blood-drenched face. And then, all the minds around her were replaying the events that had transpired a week before—the way she slammed into the windshield, and the way Amy Radner wailed on her as she choked on her own blood, followed up by her screaming and shouting and shoving Radner’s head through a window. She was blemished now in the minds of some, but in the others’ she was exalted. If nobody knew who she was before, they certainly had an idea now. 

She was a little curious as to how well she was going to fair socially now. It hadn’t even occurred to her that her life in high school might get worse after all of that. She might actually become a pariah now that she had pretty much ousted herself as a psychopath. And, shit, she definitely didn’t like that. The thought made her feel a little sweaty, honestly. 

Mandy spent half the school day contemplating the likelihood of the entire school being in on icing her out. Not a single person had spoken to her, and it was driving her insane. She felt like she was being punished, and it was miserable. Every other day, she went home from school wishing people would just learn to leave her alone, and today, they were actually leaving her alone and it was awful! She felt like a ghost. She was back to being her own shadow, and it set her nerves on edge. 

Mandy was in the middle of an inner-monologue consisting of mostly incoherent screaming when she was rudely interrupted by something being set down before her on the desktop. Billy Hargrove didn’t even pause as the items clattered against the wood, and Mandy did a double take. Her head whipped around to catch him sitting down in the seat behind her, before looking to the items in front of her once again. She turned in her seat completely, brows furrowed in confusion as she eyed Hargrove distrustfully. 

“What the hell is this?” It was the first words she had spoken all day, and they felt so unbelievably freeing. Nothing had ever tasted as sweet.

“That’s a funny way of saying ‘thank you’,” He retorted, voice a little less annoying than usual, but Mandy couldn’t pin point exactly what was so off about it.

She snorted, “I’m not gonna thank you for shit. You stole my glasses, anyway.”

“And the bracelet? Do you remember how you lost that, Queenie?” He asked as he leaned forward in his seat and moved his weight to rest against the desk space between them. 

She looked into his eyes and caught visions of bloodied lips and wind-blown hair, and she had to blink them away in befuddlement once she realized they were all images of her. The curve of her lips, the color of her blood, the ring of her laugh, and sound her bracelets made as her fist connected with Amy Radner’s face. Hargrove’s mind was still a miserable thing. Mandy didn’t know how he functioned with all the shit going on in there.

“Yeah,” She answered, voice void of any emotion as her eyes stared into he depths of his mind. She was being spacey again, and she tried to reign herself in before she went too far into Hargrove’s head. She really didn’t want to see it all—it felt like she was constantly hiding her eyes from his memories after their last encounter. It was an invasion, Mandy reminded herself, where she felt like the one most violated at the end of it all. The thought proved true when Hargrove licked his lips, leaning forward on his elbows and staring right back at her. His mind echoed with a quiet wistfulness, and Mandy had no idea where it came from: _God, I fucking want her so bad—she’s so perfect, and getting her to fucking talk to me is like pulling teeth. What the fuck is wrong with me?_

Mandy furrowed her brows as she heard his mind, eyes almost crossing as she tried to refocus herself. What the fuck?! Where the hell did all that come from?! Mandy tried to get as much information as she could, and none of it was making any sense. She was scrabbling for some insight. Hargrove had thought about her tits and her ass before, sure, and all the other disgusting thoughts boys thought about, but this was weird and different. The sensation she was picking up from him was alien to her, and she did not like it. The images entering his mind weren’t her pretty, or sexy, or happy and laughing, they were all the other things she was. Her frowny expressions and subtle disgust, the angry stares and folded arms, and the way she kicked dirt into his face and smirked down at him. It was all ugly and wrong, and Mandy couldn’t make sense of it. 

Creeped out, Mandy decided she was going to shout at him and hopefully turn him off her, “And you know what, Hargrove? Eat me. It was your fault I was hit by a car in the first place. I don’t owe you shit.”

She turned in her seat and frowned down at the glasses and bracelet on her desk, feeling miserable and uncomfortable over all the things hiding behind Billy Hargrove’s eyes. He had no business taking all her ugliest moments and cherishing them. Ugh, the boy was sick! 

“How about you lay yourself out for me, Queenie, and I’ll give it a go,” He grumbled right into her ear, and Mandy made an indignant squeaking sound. 

“God, you’re repugnant, Hargrove!” She recoiled from him, jerking forward in her seat and half-turning in his direction to eye him scornfully, “Get a life!”

He let out a booming laugh at her reaction, leaning back in his seat to avoid her reach preemptively. He seemed to think she was going to hit him, and he smirked in her direction when she gave him a cold look, “What?! You’re the one who offered!”

He was soaking in her mean expression, relishing it, and Mandy fucking hated it. He wasn’t allowed to get his rocks off when she was being angry! He got to leave that shit for when she was being cute or looking amazing in her jeans! The only thing she had in the world was to be angry, and Billy Hargrove and his demented mind weren’t allowed to take that away from her and make it something sexual. Ugh! Her frustration was at an all time high. Every time she thought Hargrove had reached the end of tricks he had up his sleeve to torment her with, he managed to find something else. It was all so unfair.

“Hargrove,” She warned, her voice lowering, and even that sounded good to him. He even had the audacity to wish she’d say his first name. Well, then! She was going to make sure she forgot it!

He chuckled, brows pulling up as he bared his teeth and clicked his tongue. Mandy fumed silently as she watched him rock forward in his seat, amusement clear on his features, “Have I told you how much I missed you, Queenie?”

He reached a hand up to try to move her hair from her face and she jerked out of his reach, “Oh, fuck off, Asshole—!”

“Mueller!” A voice interrupted her before she could really cut into Hargrove, her teacher appearing in the door with a look of reproach on his features, “You’re not even back a day, and you’re already picking more fights?”

She shrunk, pouting, and tried to look more innocent than she actually was as she turned back around in her seat, “Uh, right. Sorry, I guess.”

Her teacher gave a heavy sigh as he continued into the room, coffee cup full and eye bags particularly dark. 

“I better not see it again,” He announced drolly as he sat in his seat.

“You won’t! Sorry again,” She was going to have start checking all her corners at this rate, because she knew she had no hope of ever playing nice with anyone she went to school with. Ugh.

Mandy felt a strand of her hair being played with, and without looking back, swatted Hargrove’s hand away from her wordlessly as the teacher started the lesson. She heard him exhale softly before he whispered in her direction.

“Oh, yeah. I definitely missed you.”

She really wished he hadn’t.

* * *

“What the hell happened to your face?” Mandy Mueller paused in the middle of the hallway, blocking Steve Harrington’s path as she curled her lip in disgust, “Were you hit by a car, too? Your face looks like ground beef.”

Steve gave her a peeved glare, “I was not hit by a car, Mandy.”

“Did you get into a fight then?” Mandy asked, eyes wide, before continuing in a disconcerted whisper as she leaned towards Steve, “And did you lose?”

Mandy heard snickering from behind her, and peered over her shoulder at the same moment Steve glanced in the same direction. 

A group of boys were standing and listening to their conversation, Billy and Tommy nestled in the center of them with mirroring smug expressions. Mandy stared icily, before swinging her head in Steve’s direction with a murderous expression. She was already on her last thread of patience with Hargrove and the boner he had for her bad attitude, and her blood-pressure was at an all time high. She felt like her head could just burst.

“Listen, Mueller—“

“Did you get jumped, Steve?” She asked loudly, projecting her voice with obvious purpose as she pointed back at the group of boys, “By those rat-faced fucks?”

“No, Mandy,” He sighed, grimacing and squeezing his eyes shut in exacerbation, “Now, _please,_ drop it.”

“Drop it!?” Mandy echoed with obvious indignation, “Oh, you know what—?!”

Just as she turned to start her march toward the group of boys on the other side of the hall, Harrington snagged her by the collar before she got out of his reach. Mandy made a choking sound as she reared back, face scrunched up with fury as she turned to face him.

“You’re mad at me. Remember that, Idiot?” Steve announced, gesticulating and looking both troubled and truly confused, “What the hell are you thinking? You can’t just go around picking fights in my honor, Mueller. I’m a _ **MAN**_ , and you are a _**GIRL**_. It’s embarrassing!”

“Harrington!” Mandy barked in his face, stabbing a single index finger into his clavicle, “I got some fucking news for you, Dipshit. We’re friends, so guess what? I’m really fucking mad at you, yeah, but I’m the only person around here allowed to kick your ass. Anyone else that tries it is gonna be pushing daisies when I’m done with ‘em!”

“You haven’t ever kicked my ass,” Steve declared, rolling his eyes before putting his sunglasses on his face and placing his hands on his hips.

“I punched you so hard you barfed,” Mandy reminded emotionlessly, “Or have you forgotten that?”

Steve winced a little at the announcement, discolored visage contorting painfully, “Yeah, I do remember that.”

“Yeah, that’s right!” Mandy smirked victoriously, before promptly stomping her foot and stabbing her finger into Harrington’s chest, “Now, tell me who the perpetrator was! They’re a dead man!”

“What the hell is wrong with you, Mueller? Did the car just scramble your brain or were you always this outwardly crazy?” He asked with bewilderment ringing clear in his tone, a small disbelieving smile pulled at the ends of his lips as he shook his head, “I don’t remember you being like this before.”

Mandy opened her mouth to reply, but was immediately cut off the second she inhaled. A voice called over her retort, “She’s tasted blood, Harrington! Now she’ll never be satisfied!”

Mandy and Steve turned their heads in the direction of the sound, to spot the same group of boys laughing riotously, before Tommy exclaimed, “Hey, Mike Myers, can you keep all the psycho killer shit until after class?”

Mandy cocked her hip and jerked a thumb in Tommy’s direction, before turning to Steve with vague confusion, “Do you think he’s talking to me?”

Steve snorted, “Yeah, I think he is, Killer.”

“Mike Myers, get it?” Tommy cackled, having overheard her question, “He’s the escaped psycho from Ha—“

“Yeah, she gets it!” Steve interceded, giving a disgruntled smile in his friend’s direction.

“Hey, Little Dick,” Mandy called back, “Do you think you can keep your big, fat nose out of my business for two seconds? I know you’re in love with me and all, but I’m trying to have a conversation here.”

“Say, Mandy,” Steve began, feigning curiosity, “Who were you talking to just then?”

“Well, Steve,” Mandy replied, tone insightful and educational all at once, “I was talking to Tommy. I called him Little Dick, get it? Because his penis is small, and also, he has an unlikable personality.”

“Oh, wow!” Steve exclaimed with disingenuous surprise, “Thanks for explaining! I don’t think I would have ever figured that out.”

“Alright, alright, Assholes,” Tommy grumbled as he walked over to the duo, the group of boys following in his wake, Billy Hargrove right at his heels before he broke off and sidled up next to Mandy. She rolled her eyes in his direction with a huff as he smirked at her. Tommy gave a mocking smile in their direction, “You two think you’re just so funny, huh?”

“You started it,” Mandy declared childishly, “It’s not my fault you’re so self-conscious over your small weenie.”

“And what the hell would you know about my dick, Mueller?” He asked, sneering in her direction.

Mandy rolled her eyes as she explained dryly, “Uh, I’m friends with Carol. I know more than I ever wanted to know about your penis, Buddy.”

All the boys paused around her, their eyes all locking onto her face simultaneously, and Mandy grunted out a bewildered, “What?”

“Do girls really talk about guys’ dicks?” Someone asked, while another shouted, “I knew it! I told you!”

“Wait,” Tommy commanded, and everyone fell silent again, “Carol talked to you about me, and my…”

“Duh,” Mandy replied with a wave of her hand.

“She doesn’t even like you!” Tommy cried out, “There’s no fucking way!”

“You gotta work on your stroke game, Tomcat,” Mandy stated, smiling a little wicked smile. She placed her hand on her groin and pointed her index finger out as she thrusted her hips, “I hear it's not very good, Buddy.”

Steve made a choking sound, “Jesus, Mueller! Now I’m sure your head is fried!”

Mandy stuck her tongue out, thrusting her hips in Steve’s direction as said boy continued to back away from her, “It’s usually over-easy, Honey. But, y’know, however you want it, I can give it to you.”

The innuendo had the entire group of boys howling with laughter, and Mandy snorted at Steve’s sour expression. Finally, he snapped his fingers, pointing a single index finger at her, “I figured out what’s wrong with you! You’re high as a damn kite, Mueller!”

“Well,” Mandy drawled, rocking forward on her feet as she rolled her eyes, “I was hit by a car, in my own defense. I don’t think I could even walk without a lil’ somethin’-somethin’, honestly.”

“And your parents just unleashed you upon the school!?” Steve shouted, gesticulating bewilderedly, “That’s reckless!”

Mandy shrugged, “They’re not very good parents, if I’m being honest. I’m not too fond of them, anyway.”

“Did you drive to school today!?” Steve questioned, staring at her from behind his glasses for a moment too long, before finally exploding, “Oh, my God! You actually did!”

“I’m loopy, Steven, not fucking wasted,” Mandy defended, “Give me a break. I’m coherent, mostly.”

“Mostly,” Hargrove echoed under his breath so low that only she picked up on it. Mandy shot an unappreciative look his way, but the awful boy merely smirked down at her, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. The inside of Hargrove’s mind was incredibly amused, but at that point, Mandy was just happy he wasn’t fantasizing obsessively about her anymore. Blegh.

“Okay, first of all, don’t call me Steven—” Steve began, one finger raised.

“It’s your name, Steven,” Mandy interrupted before he could finish his statement, and Steve shot her a dirty look that she shrugged to in response, “Don’t give me that look, I didn’t name you!”

Steve decided to plow on with his dialogue, “And second of all, you need to call it a day. Pack it up, and consider not coming back to school for, like, literally another week.”

“Aw, I don’t know, Harrington,” Hargrove cut in, smirking and wringing an arm around her neck and poking a finger near her face as he pointed at her expression, “I kinda like her like this. Look at her face when she get’s all angry— _Caliente_. Kinda gets me hot.”

Mandy shrugged him off violently, nudging into him with her shoulder, “First of all! Fuck all of you! Every single one of you! And B—don’t fucking tell me what to do, Harrington! It pisses me off!!”

“Did she say ‘first’ and then ‘b’?” A boy sniggered under his breath, and Mandy glared in the general direction of the voice, unsure of who said it.

“That’s it!” Mandy declared, stomping her foot as she pointed in Steve’s direction, “I regret ever worrying over you! All boys are fucking worthless! I’m happy you got your face busted, Harrington, and the rest of you can all sit here and jerk each other off for all I care! I’m out of here!!”

Mandy turned on her heel, promptly running into Billy Hargrove’s chest, and grunting in displeasure as she shoved him out of her way. He was too busy cackling like a movie villain to stop her, and she glared abhorrently at his smiling face as she stalked away. She just wanted to knock out his chiclet teeth so he’d never smile again. Ugh!

“Aw, c’mon, Queenie!” Hargrove called to her back, voice grating on her last nerve, “Don’t be so cold! You’re breakin’ my heart!”

Mandy sent him the middle finger just before she disappeared from sight, more angry with herself than them in the moment. She couldn’t believe she had been losing her shit over these idiots ignoring her! What was wrong with her?! Honestly, she was starting to think that she was her own worst enemy.


	7. The Creep of Your Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Who knew the girl of my dreams could be the worst thing to ever happen to me?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao ok so good news everyone, I kept in will's pov that i removed from the last chap and moved it to this one and now it's like 12000 words or something oops 
> 
> anyway, this chapter is mostly billy's pov & i've been going back and forth w/ how I feel about it lol I'm trying to stay within his character that you see on the show, but also, I'm trying to take into account that he's a teenager and like, most of his scenes in the show are with Max, his stepsister that he h8s with a burning passion??? lol like, I'm trying to figure out a way to mix his scene with Mrs. Wheeler w/ the character you see in the scenes with Steve??? like annoying asshole-y teen boy who wants to be cool??? (and then also, he has a big ol' grody crush??? like y'know????) lol so idk someone heLP ME
> 
> anD YOU GUYS!! seriously!!! you're all so sweet and wonderful!! I'm so flattered by your comments and kudos (and bookmarks aaaaAaaaAAa)!! i sometimes have sudden weird moments of self-doubt (I guess I'm a lil self-concious about my writing??? lol tmi) and I rly appreciate you guys for reaching out! <3 y'all are just too sweet to me!! Thank you so much for the encouragement!! <3
> 
> ALSO, fun fact, if you squint and kinda turn your head and then think real hard there is some plot here so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Will Byers couldn’t say when the bad dreams first started, but he couldn’t really say they ever stopped. However, they did change. What started out as a dark mirror of reality and running from the ghosts of his past had ended up becoming _this_. Whatever _this_ was.

Will looked around, eyes scouring the desolate landscape. It was a vast, empty, dilapidated world, and he couldn’t say for sure if it was cast in darkness or light. It looked a little bit like the time where the sun hasn’t quite risen yet, where color starts to bloom from darkness without the face of the sun showing itself. Except everything was gray, and hazy, and not quite as cold as he remembered it. 

When the squirrelly chittering sounded, and the distant thunder rolled, Will found himself whipping around wildly, hair slapping his cheeks as he tried to spot the monster he knew all too well. His pulse throbbed low in his throat, and his eyes began to water as he squinted unblinkingly into the darkness. The wind howled around him, and his blood screamed in reply. It couldn’t be happening again. It was all meant to be over. No more now-memories and no more darkness shrouding his true thoughts. 

As the rumbling boomed over his head, and the disembodied chattering grew louder, a whimper escaped his mouth unbidden, his tears leaving him in warm, meandering trails over his cheeks. All he could think was that he had to be wrong this time. He just had to be. This couldn’t have been real. The doctors were right. It was all the trauma, and some things get worse before they get better. 

“You’re not real this time!” He found himself wailing pitifully, grabbing at his head and squeezing his eyes shut. He tried to force himself awake, shaking out his head and thinking of anything to pull him away from the orchestrated disquiet that was enveloping him, “You’re not! You’re gone! This isn’t—“

A shrill, distant whistling sounded, cutting off his next words, and the murky, not-quite-twilight sky bloomed with color. The gray clouds illuminated with a glowing orange burst that soared behind the thick veil of moisture. It streaked by, first distant and small, before growing into something larger and brighter. It lit up the clouds with golden light, all the colorless grays blossoming into something that looked like an opal stone. The strange color pattern shifted like a kaleidoscope, and the light refracted making a mesmerizing dancing rainbow effect that reminded him of a disco ball.

When the light broke through the cloud layer, the deafening explosion it created made Will gasp and cover his ears, grimacing slightly as his eyes tried to follow its path. It was bright like the sun, and just as painful to look at like it, too. The star flashed angrily across the sky, roaring toward the horizon like a bullet with a target, and Will gaped as he watched it carve through the colorless world, leaving a tailing streak of shimmering rainbow light behind it.

Once the howling ball of fire curved around the edge of the landscape, escaping his line of sight, and the ringing silence encompassed him again, he found his breath catching strangely. No more monster sounds, and no more rumbling dark gods looming over his consciousness, but suddenly, Will Byers was stricken with a great, quivering anxiousness. He couldn’t understand it, and as he turned his eyes up to the sky to watch the vibrant streaks of light slowly dwindle, he realized he couldn’t let it get away.

He found himself blinking once, and then a second time, before giving chase, eyes upturned toward the sky.

It had to have touched down, he thought listlessly as he wandered through the endless bleakness. And he just had to see it. He had to know what it was. He dreamed of hungry beasts, and black magic shrouds, and terrible, cold, mirror worlds, but he had never seen anything like this. 

When he closed in on the shiny orb, breath dragging from his lungs and legs feeling a little jell-o like, he paused to try to make out the distant form. It was a shadowy figure in the middle of the bright rainbow light, and Will’s brows shot up as he noticed the way its waist sunk in. That was a _distinctly_ feminine silhouette.

Thunder clapped overhead, and a blaring red light flashed from behind the clouds. The incandescence before him grew, what was once an angelic halo around the female shadow became a crackling energy-field. Gone was the soft brilliance and ethereal sunlight, and in its place stood an otherworldly electricity. 

“Watch out!” He screamed to the shadowy figure as a strike of red lightning touched down beside her, and the distant form spun around in a blur of obscure movement. Will squinted, trying to make out any of the woman’s features. He couldn’t, not even what she was wearing or the color of hair. 

The woman laughed, a malign kind of cackle, and Will found himself mulling over the sound silently in his mind. Weren’t heroic princesses and guardian angels supposed to have nicer sounding voices than that? For as radiant and luminous as the form was, the woman before him sounded distinctly… _evil._ Like, if Skeletor was a girl, kind of. Will found himself scrunching up his nose at the thought. 

A lady came into his dreams and saved him from a monster, only to have a witch laugh. Will didn’t know how he was supposed to feel about that. Was he being ungrateful? He wasn’t sure. He kind of felt like it, though. Also, maybe a little judgmental. This light lady was probably made up in his head, but still, he was kind of being rude, wasn’t he?

His inner rambling was cut off by a crack of lightning, the woman disappearing. He fell right over with the shock-blast she emanated, and wound up flat on his back, laying on a particularly sticky stick that stuck right in-between his shoulder blades. He blinked bewilderedly up at the sky, and his eyes reflected the light show that was taking place above him in the clouds. 

Red cracks of light, and colorful explosions, and rainbows zig-zagging though a grayscale sky. It looked like a music video on MTV, or a David Bowie album cover, or, like, if nuclear bombs were made out of neon confetti. The gray world became technicolored, all neon pinks, and happy yellows, and zinging greens, and vibrant violets. Another crack of lightning touched down like a pitchfork, pronging around him in a splintered arc, and the world around him was casted into glowing amber fire.

His heart jumpstarted in his chest, his eyes wide. That was a real close one. He suddenly felt a little stupid for laying around and watching the firefight above him so placidly. He realized then that even as pretty as the destruction was, and how badly he wanted to see the Mind Flayer finally defeated, he couldn’t stick around for the rest of the battle. Lightning touched down all around him, once he rolled over to push himself to his feet, fingers slipping into the damp, dead earth beneath him. Dirt splattered in his face once a particularly close bolt struck down before him, and Will jumped into action, turning tail, and weaving his way back into the thick of the trees in hopes for some cover.

He took off through the bramble, twigs cracking underfoot, and at his back, that horrible witchy laughter drowned out the shrill, pained shrieks of the living vines all around him. His breaths rushed through him at the sound, his heart thumping almost painfully when he realized that is sounded like it was right behind him. His panic made his lungs burn, and he swung his head around to watch the distant lights in the sky, before promptly feeling his feet giveaway beneath him. He fell head over heels into a small, empty gorge, and he barely even had time to feel the impact he made with the ground as he scrambled back to his feet, looking for somewhere to hide from all the chaos happening overhead.

He clambered under the overhang of the ditch, hiding in the dead roots of a particularly large tree as fire rained down around him. He heard the electric explosions and crackling booms, saw the vibrant, pulsating lights of the firefight going on above him, and huddled down, drawing his knees to his chest to make himself as small as possible. In the distance, he heard the roar of the Mind Flayer and the wild laughter of his female opponent. 

Finally, he heard the woman’s voice, an angry, wheezing taunt, “You been making friends without me around, Shithead?! I think I might be jealous!”

And then, more wicked, trilling laughter, before the voice called, “Wake up, Kid!”

Her voice grew warbled as she called again, “C’mon, time to get up!”

“You gotta—“ The voice became a distorted, distant call, echoing around the small alcove he commandeered for himself, and Will found himself shaking out his head, pushing his chin between his crowding knees, “Wake up—“

“Will!” He jerked up right, gasping, only to meet the wide brown eyes of his mother. Her brows raised worriedly, and Will blinked as she placed a hand on his shoulder, “Are you okay, Honey? You were making strange noises.”

Will gave a relieved breath, calming his racing heart, “Yeah, Mom, of course.”

“Are you sure, Honey?” His mom asked, brows pulled to the middle of her face as she looked to him contemplatively, “You sounded like you might have been having a nightmare. Were you?”

“Uh,” Will muttered, and his mother looked alarmed by the sound, before Will scratched the back of his head, “No, I think it was just a normal dream.”

“A normal dream?” His mother insisted, her gaze heavy and calculating.

Will breathed out a discomfited laugh, “Uh, yeah. I, uh, met a fairy princess, or something weird; she was, like, all glowy and sparkly above me. I—I don’t really remember it.”

His mother balked, removing her hands from his shoulders as she eyed him with blaring alarm. And then Will realized what he said, and what he inadvertently alluded to. 

“I’ll, uh,” It was his mom’s turn to look uncomfortable as her eyes darted to the covers over his lap, “I’ll just go get Jonathan.”

His mom left the room before he could even correct her, and Will Byers was left flustered and stuttering at his mother’s retreat.

* * *

Mandy Mueller showed up to school on a Monday, looking just as statuesque and beautiful as usual, and Billy Hargrove was struggling to come to terms with it. In his mind, she was red, wicked, and blaring—alarm bells that sounded deceptively delicate, like the chime of a charm bracelet. She was alive, and vibrant, and destructive—a perfect storm with howling winds and lightening strikes. Outside of his mind was a different story, though. When she walked through the halls, she was soft and golden—no red in sight, and no chime of bracelets. Her visage was even and delicate, and gone were the wild eyes and cutting grin. It felt like a death in his mind—sudden, and silent, and tragic all together.

She didn’t even jingle when she walked anymore, and his ears rang with the loss. She walked by him, head held high, and crystalline eyes staring ahead of her dazedly, and the only thing he heard was the clack of her heeled boots. His heart thumped painfully in his chest with each footfall.

Everything about her was off, and it left a sour taste in his mouth. With a frown, his eyes darted around the hall, spying everyone she passed watching her with hanging jaws. The silence she left in her wake was deafening, until a voice broke it from right beside him.

“Holy shit,” Carol whispered, clutching her books as she stood beside her boyfriend, “It’s like nothing ever happened.”

Tommy rose his brows from beside her, looking to Billy, clearly at a loss for words.

“Yep,” Billy supplied for Tommy, and both boys looked to Carol as she stared hard into the space Mandy once occupied.

“She’s just gonna act like she didn’t go totally psycho on Amy,” Carol announced lifelessly, “But she totally did, right? I didn’t dream that, _right?_ ”

Carol definitely hadn’t dreamt that, Billy thought. The memories were screaming at him from behind his eyelids. Mandy Mueller painted in a violent red. Mandy Mueller’s pretty laugh that sounded both like angel choirs and the devil’s call. Mandy Mueller punching another girl’s lights out with a vicious grin on her face. Everything about her had been so clear to him in that moment. All her blurred edges and mysterious quirks were thrusted under a microscope, and for that one moment, it all made sense to him. The coldness, and the distaste, and the mean words. He had thought it was a mask—a crown she set upon her head to conquer the world—but it wasn’t. She was cold, conceited, and cruel—and so much worse than he could have ever imagined. Mandy Mueller didn’t rule Hawkins High School because she was beloved. Mandy Mueller ruled Hawkins High School because she was feared, and there wasn’t a single bitch around who could step to her. 

Mandy Mueller didn’t wait to be handed her power, she simply took it, and the rest of the world knew better than to try and stop her. The realization had his head spinning and his insides worming around. Billy hadn’t ever wanted someone more than her in that moment. 

“Not a dream,” Billy answered gruffly, turning back to his locker to root around for a text book, “It happened.”

Tommy finally spoke with a troubling amount of worry, “So, Mueller’s back. But where the hell is Radner? Do you think she’s dead?”

Billy paused his search to look over his shoulder, “Does it really matter?”

Both Carol and Tommy looked to one another in silent question, and Billy narrowed his eyes in their direction warningly. He could see the subtle judgement being passed between their gazes, and it riled him for some inexplicable reason. Just as he was thinking of doing something, Tommy shrugged.

“Guess not. She was a slut, anyway,” Tommy announced dully, seeming to come to his senses. 

Carol snorted in amusement, “Such a slut! Like, do you remember when she gave that guy a BJ for those concert tickets?! Ha!”

“Oh,” Tommy chuckled, “Yeah, for her and Harrington. God, he really is an idiot. Can you believe he dated her?”

Billy rose his brows as he yanked a book from his locker and slammed it shut, “Radner dated Harrington?”

Billy wasn’t sure why that thought turned him off so much, but it did.

“Yeah, and Chapman,” Carol smirked in his direction, looking at him knowingly—as if she knew for a fact how fucking infuriated he was to be chasing after Harrington’s sloppy-seconds without a clue. The feeling inside him was about to be cataclysmic if he stayed and talked to them for any longer, so he waved himself off with minimal ceremony, before making his way to his next class.

* * *

She was a little bit testier than before, and Billy liked it. He could get Mandy Mueller’s attention just by walking in a room and looking at her the wrong way, now. He barely even had to do anything to get her to bite, and it was all just so enjoyable. It felt like the whole week-long wait had been worth it. Mandy Mueller was back, and better than ever.

He watched as she grumbled on a late Wednesday morning, blonde hair falling into her face that she simply blew away with exasperation, before adjusting the black hat on her head. She looked a little more disheveled than usual after the whole car accident, and Billy liked it. She looked like a heavy metal vixen rather than a denim ad, and it stirred something low in him that felt both satisfying and tortuous. 

“Shit!” Queenie groaned, throwing her bag to the floor and tossing her head back, catching every student’s attention in the hall around her. Billy rose his brows from across the hall a little further down, waiting to see what she would do. She did nothing other than rub her eyes and groan louder, sounding more frustrated, _“Shit!”_

She kicked her locker door, and paced the short distance from wall to wall, hands hiding her eyes from the world. Billy narrowed his eyes in her direction, already curious as to what was bothering her so much. Mandy Mueller always seemed to be in a world of her own, and it constantly left Billy wondering what she was up to. It usually ended up pretty fucking interesting, if nothing else.

As he leaned against the wall by the water fountain, a group of girls emerged from the bathroom around the corner, all of them sporting similar pastel attire that had Billy losing interest before he even bothered to look the group’s way. They spotted him with a matching set of goo-goo eyes, and he smirked devilishly to himself without even looking at them. 

“Hey, Billy!” One girl called from the group as they passed him, and he looked to the voice, recognizing a girl from one of his classes. He gave her a polite smile. She was alright—nothing much besides nice, really. But still, she did everything she could to help him in class, and any help was good help when you were a new kid.

“Hey,” He murmured back distractedly, eyes darting back to Mandy Mueller’s tantrum she was throwing down the hall. It seemed that most of the kids in the hall had evacuated, besides a few people who seemed to be too busy in conversation to really care what Mueller was bitching about.

“Oh, my god,” A girl from the group scoffed, “Is that psycho still acting out? God, why hasn’t she been sent to Pennhurst already?”

Billy rose his brows when he realized that question was meant for him, but he didn’t get enough time to respond before the rest of the girls were snickering at the girl’s words.

“Mueller’s a public menace! I can’t believe they allowed her back at school,” Another exclaimed.

Followed by a jeering, “I wonder whose dick she had to suck to make sure she didn’t get kicked out!”

“Ha! I was thinking the same thing!” One girl whooped, shaking the girl’s shoulder beside her.

Billy wasn’t sure what he was expecting from this group of girls, but it hadn’t been that. They were unremarkable, brunette, pastel-wearing clones of one another, their only differing traits being that some sported glasses and some were slightly more ginger, and he couldn’t believe the fucking mouths on them. He was nearly positive he had no grounds at being so pissed, but his insides didn’t give a shit about all of that. The darkest parts of him were writhing around like an army of undead clawing their way out of the grave, and he did everything he could to train his features into steady nonchalance. Yelling at a group of girls wasn’t a good look on any guy.

It turned out that he hadn’t even needed to do anything, as a voice shouted out, filling the air with an electricity that Billy Hargrove hadn’t ever experienced before.

“You got something you wanna say to me?” Mandy Mueller’s disheveled form asked from her position down the hall, her shoulders squared and jaw clenched as she pointed a threatening finger in their direction, “Huh? I thought I heard something about being a psycho and a public menace?”

The group of girls stood silently, all six—seven, maybe? Billy recounted through squinted eyes—shifted uneasily on their feet, and he looked between Mueller and the girls with great anticipation. He looked to Mandy, brows jumping on his face when he watch her stomp a little closer.

“C’mon, guys, let’s just go,” The ring leader muttered, turning on her heel.

“Oh, yeah,” Mandy called out mockingly, waving her arms around her as she gesticulated wildly, “Let’s just go, guys! Mandy Mueller’s so scary! I only like to talk shit about her when she can’t hear me!”

The whole group huddled in on one another, eyeing her uneasily, and Billy smiled in her direction, perking up as he spotted the manic, mocking smirk on her face.

“Whatever,” The ringleader rolled her eyes in Mueller’s direction, as another girl grabbed her shoulder and gave Mandy a dirty look.

“Oh, it’s whatever, now? Oh, okay!” Mandy practically screamed, her whole body trembling all over, and Billy was preparing himself mentally for some kind of explosion, “So, it’s whatever then, Bitch! Bye! Run along then, Chickenshit! You wanna talk shit, right? Better make sure I’m not around to hear you then!”

“Ugh, she’s so fucking desperate for attention!” A girl muttered amongst the group.

Followed by, “Just ignore her, she’s crazy.”

Billy was sitting on the razor’s edge awaiting her reaction. His expression must have looked a little antsy, because as he stepped away from the group, one girl turned to him with a look of concern.

Mandy Mueller was down the hall in a flash, grabbing her hat and tossing it behind her as she marched towards the group. Some near the back of the herd broke off and rounded the corner with terror-stricken faces, while the rest backed away from the bravest three girls in the group, gasping and whispering worriedly. The three main girls faced down Mueller with a courage that Billy really hadn’t expected of them, but he was slowly learning he really underestimated people—girls especially.

“What was that?” Mueller asked, her voice a deadly kind of calm that only warned of something terrible soon to come. The girl before her stared her down from behind a thick pair of glasses. As soon as she opened her mouth to reply, Mandy was swatting her books out of her grasp and letting her school work drop the ground and fan along the floor as she reiterated, “What the _fuck_ did you just say?”

“Bitch!” One of the other girls shouted indignantly, and as one of them went to pick up one of the books, Mandy Mueller stomped one of her expensive heeled boots right on top of it, ultimately hindering the girl from her pursuits. The books slapped back to the floor, effectively smashing the girl’s fingertips, and she recoiled with a pained hiss.

“Did I tell you to pick that up?” Mandy asked calmly, looking to the girl crouching on the ground, who eyed her with blaring apprehension. The girl shook her head, standing up straight and avoiding her friends’ disbelieving eyes, “That’s right. I fucking didn’t. Don’t do it again.”

“Y’know what? You deserved to get hit by that car, Bitch! Someone had to take you down a peg!” The main girl shouted, looking only slightly frazzled, and Mandy ignored her in favor of kicking the textbooks and papers along the floor.

Queenie bent down quickly, picking up a stack of papers and showing it off to the three girls in front of her, before she began to scan it while speaking distractedly, “Y’know, I kinda agree. I mean, who do I think I am, right? If I were you, I’d be jealous, too.”

“I’m not jealous of you!” The girl shouted in outraged, balling her fists, “As if, Mueller! You’ve actually gone completely insane!”

“Sounds like something a jealous person would say,” Mandy shrugged, giving a lofty smirk, “Also, is this a project for chem? An essay, huh? It’s good! Y’know, you’re pretty smart for being such a dumb bitch.”

The girl simply gaped, brows furrowed as she opened and closed her mouth again trying to form words, before a girl over her shoulder shouted in her defense, “Conceited cow!”

Mandy simply laughed, shaking her head, before holding up the paper, “Hey, is this due today? I hope for your sake it isn’t.”

“W—“ Whatever words the girl was going to speak were cut off as Mandy tore the packet of paper asunder, shredding it to pieces with an easy smile on her face, her blue eyes catching the light like the glint on a sharp blade. She looked down at the mess on the floor, spotting a name in curly writing on the corner of a piece of binder paper.

“Katie, huh? That’s a cute name, _Katie._ Well, now that I’ve got your attention—” Mandy smiled, toeing a few papers on the ground before promptly kicking a textbook down the hall, a bundle of loose paper flying in the air, “Guess what, Katie? You were right—they should have sent me to the nuthouse. I’m the crazy fucking bitch who made Amy fucking Radner disappear like a magic trick. And guess what? I liked Radner. I tolerated Radner. I respected Radner—or, well, a little, at least. Okay, so maybe only the one time, but that’s beside the point— 

“See, Katie, I don’t give a single shit about you. Not even one. I have no investment in you as a person, you get it? So, if you do piss me off again, I can’t guarantee I’ll be as nice to you as I was with Radner, and I broke a window with her face, y’know. So, for your own sake, you better shape up, you little shithead, and I better not hear another fucking peep out of you. Because, guess what? You haven’t seen half of what I’m capable of. And you think I’m crazy now? Well, I think you may just cry when I show you what other tricks I got up my sleeve. You get what I’m saying?”

Katie gave a particularly willful look, chest puffing up, and Mandy stepped forward, her taller form looming as she got in the smaller girl’s face. Billy bit his lip, trying to contain the amused smirk on his lips as Mandy looked down at the girl, repeating herself with a look of pure warning, “Do you get what I’m saying? I’m saying, Katie, that I hit Amy Radner so hard that she forgot her own name, and if you give me a reason, I’m gonna do something worse to you, you get it? I kinda feel like maybe, if you keep looking at me the way you are, I might just grab you by your hair and swing you into one of these lockers, over and over and over—and I’ll keep doing it as many times as it takes to crack your little head open. You get me now?”

Katie nodded her head, and Mandy nodded along with her, smile mocking, “Well, go ahead. Say it. Say you got it.”

Katie looked to her woodenly, color draining from her face, “I g-got it.”

“Do you?” Mandy asked, looking to her expectantly, “Are you sure you got it? See, ‘cause I don’t want there to be any confusion in the future. I think I might feel bad if something were to happen to you because I wasn’t clear enough.”

Katie nodded again, voiceless and actually looking a little green in the gills. Said girl looked down to her feet, spying all her possessions along the ground, looking ready to drop to her knees, before pausing as she caught Mueller’s lowered gaze. Mandy merely shook her head slowly in reply, and Katie cleared her throat, her friends behind her looking thoroughly chastened, eyes trained on their ringleader for any sort of idea as to what to do.

“Yeah, I got it,” Katie muttered weakly, eyes darting around to avoid locking her gaze on Mueller’s stoic face, “I get what you’re saying.”

Mandy merely nodded in response, dismissing them with a flick of her wrist, “Good, you can go now.”

The three girls looked around, noticing how isolated they were with identical looks of horror, before Katie was walking off empty handed, her two friends scurrying at her heels. All three girls turned their heads simultaneously as they rounded the corner, looking over their shoulders with wide eyes and mirrored looks of weariness. Mandy watched them go, surrounded by a mess of her own making, and Billy walked off behind her, snatching her hat off the ground before rounding back to her stock-still form.

“You like throwing shit around, don’t you?” He asked sarcastically as he held out her hat as a gesture of goodwill, and Mandy slid her dull gaze to his form, eyes lowering to spy her hat in his hand, before her eyes locked back onto his gaze.

“Did you know those girls?” She asked lowly, all traces of anger leaving her form as she sighed and took the hat from his hands. Her fingers tapped against his knuckles briefly, before she slapped the wide-brimmed black hat on the top of her head with very little grace. Billy could feel the phantom warmth of her touch still, and it felt like his whole body caught fire in response. 

“No,” He answered a little too quickly, before adding on with an uncomfortable amount of honesty, “Well, just the one—she’s in my English class.”

“Which one?” Mandy’s brows rose, pinching slightly in the middle and making a small fold on her forehead that made him want to flatten the skin with his thumbs.

“Uh, don’t really know her name,” He shrugged, kicking away some stray papers at his feet, “She’s got shoulder length hair and wears a purple-y sweater a lot.”

“Purple-y?” Mandy repeated, brows pinching even more as she cued him to explain further.

Billy shrugged in response, his whole body coming alive at the realization that he was actually having a normal fucking conversation with Mandy Mueller. Sure, it was after a whole dramatic shouting match she had with another girl, in which she threatened physical harm, but still, she was a girl that no one could ever fucking compare to, and who, previous to that moment, didn’t want anything to do with him. And she was just talking to him about colors like _nothing_ —like it was an everyday fucking occurrence. It made him stupidly excited for no reason at all, and he struggled to maintain his easy indifference. He felt a little twitchy. He kind of wanted to smoke.

He loosened his shoulders, shrugging, “I don’t know—like a little purple and a little blue. It’s pastel, if that helps.”

Mandy rolled her eyes, “Do you mean periwinkle? Are you looking for the word periwinkle, Hargrove? Seriously, how did you make it past kindergarten if you don’t know your colors?”

He gave her an unamused look, “Okay, periwinkle, yeah. That sounds right.”

“Periwinkle sweater, shoulder length hair, she’s in your English class, and you don’t know her name,” Mandy listed off dully, eyes looking far off into the distance, and Billy could spy a plot forming behind her far-off gaze. He just knew she was brewing some awful ideas in her little blonde head. He wished it didn’t turn him on so much. Every- _fucking_ -thing she did now made him want to throw her down on the nearest surface and have his way with her. 

He sighed, lip curling in his distress as he stared at her pretty face. It was so fucked up. He could have any girl at school besides her, and he had to have eyes only for her. Everything paled in comparison. She was striking and red—a word all underlined. She was a tornado that sucked him right in, and he was hopeless to escape. She felt like a song that he had stuck in his head, and no matter what he did, he just couldn’t forget it. She haunted him, and it fucking sucked.

He must have zoned out, because she was looking at him with an impatient look that suggested she had probably said something to him that warranted an answer, and when she shouted at him, he felt like his whole body took a jolt of electricity, “Hargrove! Is now the time for daydreaming? We’re literally in the middle of a conversation, Jesus H. Christ!”

Billy frowned at her, sneering mockingly, “Sorry, Princess, I was just thinking about how hot you’d look sitting naked in my lap.”

Mandy merely sneered right back, “Oh, I’m sure you were, Billy-boy. But please, let’s focus on more important matters.”

“Well, I’d say my thing was pretty important,” Billy shrugged, cocking his head and grinning cheekily at her when she didn’t lash at him for his last comment. 

Mandy rolled her eyes at him with a disgruntled moan, “I’m sure you would.”

“Ooh, and you’d be making noises like that,” Billy added on, grin growing wider when Mandy’s visage took on a particularly furious expression that included narrowed eyes and pursed lips.

“Ugh, honestly! Fuck you, Hargrove! You’re so infuriating!” She shouted, her cheeks flushing just slightly pink as she huffed, and her face in combination with his next words had Billy laughing in response.

Booming laughter escaped him as he replied, “Well, I’ve been waiting for you to offer, Queenie.”

She shrieked out a little curse, her whole body quaking all over, and Billy was putting his hands up in his own defense as she swung an open palm at him. He dodged her grip, and took off down the hall, with her hot on his heels, shouting the whole way. He was in the middle of tossing his head back and cackling at the threats she was yelling at his back, when his foot slipped out from beneath him, sending him sprawling onto his back. Papers fluttered into the air above him, and Mandy cried out as she floundered while trying not to step onto his head, before promptly falling face first into his crotch.

“Oof!” He groaned a little as her skull met his groin.

“Oh, my god! I’m bleeding!” She shouted at no one in particular, before pushing herself up on her knees, the seat of her jeans landing right on his face and cutting off his air supply.

“Mueller, fart, quick!” Someone shouted distantly from around them, and Mandy lifted her ass from his face in response. He promptly pushed her hips further down his chest.

“Jesus Christ, Queenie,” Billy began, too clever and too stupid to stop his next words, “When I said I’d been waiting, I didn’t mean for you to throw yourself at my dick.”

Mandy twisted her torso to peek back at him, and he grinned in response, before he spotted her bloody lip, and his face contorted with his bewilderment. He sat up quickly, sending her tumbling off him at an awkward angle that left her collapsed beside him with one leg under her and the other sprawled beside her.

“Holy shit,” He eyed her worriedly, brows furrowing as she covered her bloody mouth with one hand, and he licked his lower lip briefly, biting down hard on it as the sudden urge to kiss her came up. She was just so close, and he could see everything about her now—pretty blue starburst eyes framed by soft features. He blinked away the images that flooded his mind unbidden. Hungry wolves, wild things, crackling lightning, and her pretty mouth red all over. He couldn’t stop wondering what she tasted like—couldn’t stop thinking about grabbing her face and putting his mouth on every part of her he could reach. He didn’t know what to do, he just knew he wasn’t supposed to kiss her when she busted her lip because of him. Even though he really fucking wanted to. 

“Well?!” She shouted, her voice muffled by her hand, “Don’t look at me like that! I told you I’m bleeding!”

A bead of red dripped from beneath her hand, drawing a straight line down her chin, and Billy blinked, clearing his throat, “Right—c’mon, Queenie, let’s get you cleaned up.”

He got up to his feet, helping her up with a hand on her elbow as she tried to catch the blood coming from her mouth with both hands now. He leaned down quickly to gather her hat that had flown off in the chaos, and carried it with one hand, while the other one held her arm and dragged her along after him to the nearest bathroom around the corner.

He swung open the door with a loud clang, tugging her into the empty restroom and beelining straight for the sinks, before he paused mid-step, looking around—a single realization lingered in his head: the girl’s bathrooms were so much nicer than the boys. What bullshit, he thought bitterly, before turning on the sink and yanking at Mandy as she was in the middle of walking off. She whined, looking toward the paper towel dispenser wistfully, and Billy sighed, tossing her hat onto the counter space, before reaching around her and grabbing a fistful of paper, and tossing it beside them in an empty sink.

“Alright, Queenie,” He nodded to her hands, “Let’s see the damage.”

She gave him a suspicious look, shaking her head slowly, and Billy nodded his head in response, “Yeah, I think so. C’mon, let’s see it.”

Mandy eyed him hatefully, shaking her head firmly in reply, “Nuh-uh.”

Billy frowned, narrowing his eyes in her direction, before grabbing at her arms and trying to pry them away form her face. She fought him with a startling amount of strength, grappling against his hold and muttering her dissent. When he finally got one of her hands off, she simply pivoted the rest of her body out of his reach, leaving him huffing and grumbling out, “Do you want to bleed for the rest of the day or what? You’re not doing yourself any favors by being fucking difficult with me.”

Finally, her eyes darted over to him warily, “I think a tooth might have come loose.”

His eyes widened, and a laugh escaped his lips at her abrupt confession. She eyed him contemptibly and he waved his empty hand around, trying to to stop her from getting too offended, “Wait, I didn’t mean to laugh—“

“Yes, you did,” She looked to him, demeanor frosty, and he pinched his lips to withhold himself from laughing at her impetuous expression, “Don’t bother trying to lie. It pisses me off.”

He gave a mild look of indignation, before shrugging with a slightly guilty look, “Alright, alright. Now c’mon, I’ve seen a few missing teeth in my day. I’m ready, show me.”

She looked to him distrustfully, eyes shifting from one side of his face to the other before she finally sighed and exposed her mouth to him, and he swallowed hard, squinting slightly at the red smear she left behind. He shifted on his heels, fidgeting his fingers as he withheld from reaching out for her.

“Oh, God, your face,” She winced, “Is it really that bad? 

“Uh,” He blinked, spotting the triangle shaped split in the middle of her bottom lip, “It’s not too bad, really. You sure you caught a tooth?”

She shrugged, and he motioned for her to open her mouth quickly, and Mandy rolled her eyes, “I’m not a child, y’know. I can handle this by myself.”

“Just shut up and open your mouth,” He retorted plainly, and she looked at him snootily.

“So which is it? Shut up or open up?” She snarked, and Billy gave a mocking laugh in reply.

“Oh, you’re a real clever one, Queenie,” He bit out sarcastically, “And you know what I fucking meant, so c’mon.”

With a huff, she bared her teeth tentatively, and Billy spotted the reddened the little squares in their perfect little lines, none missing.

“Looks good to me,” Billy shrugged haplessly, “They’re all there.”

Mueller looked unabashedly relieved, nodding to herself, and Hargrove turned towards the sink, tugging her closer to him as he grabbed some paper towels and wet them. As he lifted his hand towards her face, she jerked away from him.

“What the hell are you doing?” She questioned bitterly, her upper lip curling as she leaned away from him still.

“Did you not want help or what?” He finally asked, getting peeved by her unsettled nature. She was like a wild animal. Everything about her was uneasy over him, and it was grating on his nerves. He couldn’t even be nice to her without her giving him dirty looks, and it was fucking irritating, “I’m here out of the kindness of my heart, and you what? You just don’t want it?”

Mandy made a face, echoing drolly, “The kindness of your heart?”

“Well, you did bust your face on my dick—“ He didn’t even get to finish his statement before she was interrupting, and it kind of made him sad. He was going to say something really clever.

“It was your belt buckle, not your limp dick, Hargrove! Honestly!” Her exclamation had him chuckling at her as she stewed, eyeing him detestably, “Quit laughing, it’s not funny!”

He shrugged unashamedly, trying to fight the smile that was pulling at his lips, “It’s pretty funny.”

Mandy made a disgruntled expression that looked like she was smelling a fart, and he lost it. He bowed back into a boisterous laugh that made her pout and stomp her foot petulantly, “It’s not funny when it happens to me!”

“Would it even happen to anyone else?” He shot back, and the look of unhidden misery gave him his answer. No, shit like this did not happen to anyone else but Mandy Mueller. She jumped out of windows and got hit by cars, and dusted herself off and marched off right into the next catastrophe. It was kind of part of her charm, when he thought about it long enough. She was a demolition woman—who mostly ruined her own life, really—but still, destructive by her very nature. She was truly something to behold.

She peered at him from the corner of her eye, before sighing, crossing her arms, and replying testily, “Okay, fine! Enough making fun of me! If you’re here to help then just do it!”

He raised his arm holding the wet napkin slowly, giving her an expectant look until he found the skin on her neck, making a quick swipe up the center of her throat. She flinched at the contact, blinking momentarily as she tilted her head back slightly to give him easier access. The act of her baring her neck to him had him wanting to take a long lick of her, and he hated it. He swiped faster until he reached her chin and had to grab it between his fingers to tilt her face towards him. 

Mandy winced in his hold, eyes darting anywhere but his face, and he was hit by the sudden realization of how isolated they were. He cleared his throat loudly, and ended up catching her attention without meaning to. Her eyes shot to his face, eyes catching his gaze for just a moment too long, and he was inexplicably reminded of days wasted at the boardwalk and the frigid spray of the ocean. His homesickness was so fucking annoying sometimes, and he frowned as he tore his eyes from hers, going back to his work of cleaning the bloodied corners of her lips.

“Alright,” She jerked out of his hold, tearing herself away without a glance in his direction, “I got it from here.”

Mandy stepped away from him and turned towards the paper towel dispenser, fiddling with it distractedly, and it was just another cold shoulder in the long sequence he had gotten previous. With a roll of his eyes, he leaned against the sink, crossing his arms as he watched her become frustrated when nothing came from the container, before she rounded on him.

“Did you take all the fucking paper towels? Seriously?” She hissed, stomping back over and snatching a handful, beginning to scrub at her face with a vicious tenacity. Her complexion turned an angry red in her struggle, and she sighed, “Jesus fucking Christ! My luck couldn’t get worse!”

“I tried to help,” He announced drolly, and she looked to him with a forbidding look to which he merely shrugged, “Well, I did.”

“This is all your fault,” She announced in a huff, “I don’t even wanna hear it from you!”

“You’re the one who fell,” He retorted with a snort, watching as she wet the paper with water and tried to blot around her mouth.

Her eyes darted from her own reflection to give him an icy look, “You fell first, Dillweed.”

He rolled his eyes at her, before quipping, “I slipped on the papers you threw everywhere, so we’re right back to this being your fault, Dipstick.”

Mandy made a disgruntled sound in the back of her throat at his retort, tossing the wet napkin into the sink and turning to him with reddened lips being the only signifier of her previously bloodied state. 

“Are you trying to tell me that you think it’s my fault that you fell?” She asked, brows raising as she cocked her hip and put a single hand on her hip, flipping her hair over one shoulder in one graceful sweep.

He rose his brows in response to her body language, “Isn’t it? I wouldn’t have fallen otherwise.”

“Oh, don’t be so bitter about it, Hargrove. I have all the other boys falling over themselves, too,” She grinned wickedly, shifting her weight from foot to foot as she eyed him, her whole body swaying back and forth. Billy looked to her curiously, unable to even begin to comprehend the sudden shift in mood. He didn’t know what to make of the look on her face, since she was looking at him like maybe— _just maybe_ —she wanted him to bite for the bait. Was she being playful? Billy jerked upright, entire face looking as suspicious as he felt. 

“Wh—“ He didn’t even get a single word at before she was closing the space between them, her face coming toward him, and he wasn’t about to let the opportunity go to waste. Just as his eyes spied her lips close enough, he tried to duck his head quickly to catch her mouth, and her head swiveled right out of his line of fire, his nose bumping into her ear as she reached behind him. She came back around him with her hat in her hands, plopping it back onto her head watching him with raised brows and a cocky, all-knowing look in her eye.

Fuckin’ A. 

“Hm,” She hummed contentedly to herself, brows jumping on her face as she tilted her head up at him, “And you can’t even deny it.”

Fucking tease. Fucking bitch. Fucking fuck! He could not fucking believe it. His entire being was going through waves of numb shock and red, hot fury. He couldn’t fucking believe her! So much for frigid Mandy Mueller with that easy to play temper. How the fuck had he gone from toying with her to her twisting everything around to toy with him? And it all happened so fast! He just fucking dived head first into her bullshit! What the fuck?!

Mandy Mueller had just played Billy Hargrove like a fucking fiddle, and it didn’t even feel like she really tried. Billy scowled as he watched her open the restroom door and step outside with her usual mask of indifference, the only difference being the small quirk in the corner of her lips. She looked too damn proud of herself, and Billy was going to come up with a way to wipe that look off her face once and for all. 

If she wanted to play fastball, he’d fucking show her how it was done.

* * *

“Dude, where have you been!?” A voice called as he walked through the threshold, and Billy Hargrove looked up to catch sight of a few familiar faces. Tommy grabbed his shoulder as Carol handed him a beer, “Mueller has been running wild! She’s already punched a hole in the wall!”

Billy rose his brows, cracking open the beer, and allowing Tommy and Carol to lead him into the amber-lit kitchen. Becky Chapman was having a party at her house in an obvious ploy to try to make friends. He had debated even showing up, as it was pretty much a recipe for disaster given his history with the girl. But, a small part of him had whispered, he really needed to make a splash in his first months. He had to set himself apart, and make sure everyone knew just who the fuck he was. 

He downed the beer in record time before replying, “Mandy Mueller? The one with the stick up her ass?”

“One in the same, my friend,” Tommy nodded as he poured Carol another cup of punch, “You would have lost your shit if you saw her, man. I swear, whatever her doctor gave her, I need me some. Ha _ha!_ ”

As if summoned by her name alone, Mandy Mueller skidded around the corner, face hidden by an over-sized pair of sunglasses. He couldn’t tell if it was a fashion statement or not, but she looked dumb as hell. His brows rose as she ran right into him, hand warm against his bare stomach as she tried to cushion herself.

“ _Oh, he-llo,_ ” She drawled, her tone slow and sweet like honey as she pushed her sunglasses down her nose to ogle his stomach. She wiggled her brows suggestively as she watched the movement of her hand, the pads of her fingers running along the carved lines of his muscles, “ _Have we—_ Wait… Oh, goddamnit! _Hargrove!_ Put it away already! I mistakenly thought you were somebody bearable! Honestly, I almost came onto you! What the hell is wrong with you?!”

She pushed him away with the hand on his abdomen, irritated, and he allowed her, stepping back and laughing under his breath as his brows rose. His mind was going to hold onto that low, warm tone she used. It rolled down his spine like the feeling of a hot shower after a hard work out, and he didn’t think he had ever heard something so satisfying before. He knew some part of her found him attractive, and now he had his proof. All the plans he had for her were starting to actually look like they might play out.

“Well, you were doing pretty good for a second there,” Billy shrugged, smirking easily, “Go on. Keep going.”

Please, his mind snarked. She scowled and sneered and mocked, and the one time she looked at him with anything besides some level of disgust, she thought he was somebody else. Or wished, at least. He couldn’t figure out what she hated so fucking much. She had been blowing him off right from the start, and Billy couldn’t figure out what angle he could use to win her over. Nothing ever seemed to work with her. Playing nice hadn’t worked, and picking arguments hadn’t really worked either, and he just didn’t fucking know what to do when it came to her. 

It was a bit cruel of his fucking heart to like her so much, honestly. He was softening to her, and he hated it. She pushed, and he just let her, because at least she was touching him then. It was so fucking weak of him, and he _really_ fucking hated it. He was struggling with figuring out a way to stop.

Mandy rolled her eyes, opening her mouth to undoubtedly say something scathing, if her icy facial expression was anything to go by, before she was interrupted by a bellowing call of her name. She jumped, freezing and raising her shoulders to her ears with a grimace, before running around him and ducking as Steve Harrington rounded into the kitchen. 

“Mueller! When I find you, you’re dead!” He shouted as he ran right past her and into the living room, and Billy watched him blandly as he went by. Mandy peeked around Billy’s shoulder once Harrington was out of sight.

“Is he gone?” She whispered from behind his ear, and the light gust of her breath had a small tingle running down the back of his neck. Billy refused to be affected, and turned to her, brows raised expectantly.

“Yeah, you gonna explain that?” He grinned, watching as she looked to him purposefully. 

“Do you like my new shades?” She asked, sniffing and tilting her chin up proudly.

He chuckled at her expression, and the way the sunglasses balanced at the small curve of her nose, “They’re butt ugly, Princess, I hope you kept the receipt.”

She sighed, tossing her head back and stomping her foot, “No, Idiot! I said— _Do you like my new shades?_ ”

Mandy put more emphasis on the repeated phrase as if that was meant to help him figure out what she meant, and Billy shrugged at her, not even remotely drunk enough to entertain the mind games she was playing, “I don’t know how the hell I’m meant to answer that. I already said they’re ugly.”

Mandy gave him a subtle look of disappointment as she lifted the glasses from her face and set them atop her head, “I stole them from Harrington. They’re Steve’s glasses, Hargrove. Good job at ruining the reveal, by the way.”

He rose his brows, “How was I supposed to figure that out from ‘do you like my new shades’? What the fuck? I’m not a mind reader.”

Mandy’s lips curled up, eyes turning into happy little crescent moons as she laughed at his befuddlement. His brows pinched as he looked down at her with blatant suspicion, and she laughed even louder, clutching her stomach, “Get that dumb look off your face, Hargrove, before I wet myself!”

She looked at him again, eyes tearing up in the corners as she bent over into another fit of laughter, and Billy shook his head in confusion. He had no fucking idea what was so funny, and it seemed neither did anyone else around him, as they all looked on with questioning gazes. Tommy caught his eye, and gestured to the girl before him, and Billy shrugged in reply. He had no idea.

“Mueller!” Harrington’s voice exclaimed, and Mandy jerked upright, visage painted with clear alarm, and if it weren’t for the slight flush on her cheeks, Billy would have actually doubted he just watched her bow over into hysterics over him.

“She’s not in at the moment,” Mandy called back nervously as she ran out of the kitchen in the opposite direction, leaving Steve Harrington in the doorway, “Call back another time and maybe you’ll catch her!”

Tommy and Carol cackled as she ran passed, and Steve darted after her. Billy leaned to peer out of the doorway with a few other people to watch as Steve and Mandy ran into the garage, then right out of sight. A loud metallic crash was heard, and Billy rose his brows, straining his ears to hear any sounds of distress. Finally, he heard a clipped shout of pain. It was Harrington’s, and he smirked to himself. Nice one, Queenie.

Mandy popped up from around the corner, eyes wide and expression alarmed as she moved into the kitchen and toward a window over the sink. She yanked open the curtains with a flourish, and everyone around her moved away in order to avoid being hit by her wingspan.

“Mueller, what the hell are you doing?” Tommy asked as he watched her hop onto the counter to sit and pivot her legs into the sink filled with dishes. Billy was happy he asked, because he too was curious. Mandy busied herself with fiddling with the lock on the window, before finally sliding it open.

“I’m busy, not now,” She finally muttered and she put her hand against the screen, pushing against it and watching as it stretched. 

“Uh,” Carol began, “Mandy, the suspense is killing me. You gotta tell us what you’re thinking here, Sweetie.”

Mandy peeked over her shoulder at the other girl, looking to her with a devious smile, “Wanna see a magic trick?”

Everyone rose their brows in her vicinity, before she stuck her legs through the window and sent the screen springing into the darkened backyard. Billy let out a holler of disbelieving laughter, Carol slapped a hand over her mouth as she let out an abrupt guffaw, and Tommy snorted shamelessly.

“She’s gonna jump!” Carol tossed her head back, exclaiming through a throaty chuckle, “Oh, my God!”

“Hopping out of another window, Mueller? I’m starting to think you’re developing some bad habits,” Tommy wagged a finger at her as he grinned, and Mandy stuck out her tongue before wiggling her ass onto the window sill.

“Feel free to kiss my ass on my way out, Bitches!” She cackled wildly as she hopped out of the window and out of sight, before the group of teens heard the rustling of leaves and a muffled groan, “Ugh, not a rose bush! Why, God?!”

Everyone in the kitchen doubled over with laughter, only letting up the moment Steve appeared in the doorway, hair askew. Every head turned to him, taking in his mussed hair and the fact that his right foot was encased in a paint bucket, and everyone was back to howling with laughter. Steve put his hands up, gesturing to everyone’s bemusement.

“What the hell is so funny?” He asked, before he looked down and noticed the bucket. He put his hands on his hips and hung his head, before kicking out his foot in hopes to turn himself loose. Finally, the empty paint bucket went flying through the air, bonking right into the chandelier in the nearby dining room and sending it swinging precariously. Everyone held their breath as they watched it rock dangerously, before it finally rattled to a stop, and everyone’s collective breaths were released all at once. Steve looked to everyone in the kitchen, before asking, “Now, where the hell is Mandy Mueller?”

“Out here, Stevie!” The girl he was looking for hopped outside the window, waving her arms in hopes to be seen, eyes barely reaching the window as she jumped to see inside, “Come get me!”

Steve gaped before marching to the window and leaning out it, “How the hell did you get out there?!”

“Ha! I jumped, Pussy! Come and get me!” Mandy Mueller’s disembodied voice goaded, and Billy Hargrove had never been more excited to see what was going to happen next. Steve gave an indignant squawk at her words.

“Maybe I will!” He shouted down at her as he pulled his long legs onto the counter and jumped out the window. With a loud crash and sharp scream, he fell to the ground, “Ouch! Shit! This bush has thorns, Mueller!”

“Now suffer!” Mandy’s cackle grew faint, before there was an explosion of noise in the next room, and she barreled right back into the kitchen to hop onto the counter, sit on her knees, and stick her butt in the air as she leaned out the window. Carol smacked her ass from her position closest to her, making her yelp and glance at her distractedly as she muttered, “Not now. Can’t you see I’m busy, Carol?”

“Mueller! When I get out of these flowers, your ass is mine!” Steve’s disembodied voice shouted from outside, and Mandy ooh’d from the window, wiggling her butt where it was in the air.

Mandy wiggled her eye brows, “Ooh, is that so, Stevie?”

“That’s it!” Steve shouted, followed by rustling leaves and grunting nonsense that had everyone in the kitchen chuckling quietly. Mandy gasped as she looked at the window, before addressing the room with a worried expression.

“Fuck! He freed himself a lot sooner than I expected!” She screeched, before the sliding glass door was heard opening in the next room, and Mandy was one leg out of the window again, looking miserable as she muttered, “Fucking god damn it, Harrington.”

And then she was back out of the window, and Steve stormed into the room just as she was out of sight. Panting, eyes wide, with a whole floral arrangement sticking from his helmet-hair, he bellowed, “Where is that little shit?!”

Everyone wordlessly pointed to the open window, and he tossed his head back before sprinting from the room and towards the door that led to the back of the house. Unintelligible shouting was heard from the backyard, before Billy leaned into the window to spy both Mueller and Harrington running circles on the big grassy lawn. Tommy peered out, followed by Carol, and all three watched the scene unfold silently, brows raised.

Finally, Carol whispered to both boys on either side of her head, “What do you think would happen if we turned on the sprinklers?”

Tommy and Billy perked up then, before all three were off towards the garage to try to figure out the sprinkler system. They ran into Becky on the way, and she laughed at them, flipping a switch that triggered a series of distant nonsensical curse words Billy had never been confident enough to even think of combining. The group rushed to the back room to watch as Steve got sprayed in the face with a steady stream of water that landed him directly on his ass. Mandy was too busy sputtering and hacking up a lung to even notice him on the ground, and tumbled head-over-heels onto the grass, Steve’s over-sized glasses flying into the air as her face slammed into the earth.

“Shit!” Steve exclaimed, wiping the water from his dripping face, and Mandy groaned, pulling her face from the lawn and spitting out a chunk of mushy grass.

“Oh, my God! What was just in my mouth!?!” Mandy wailed pitifully, clawing along the ground to grab the glasses, and put them back onto her face with what little dignity she had left, “I think I had a worm in mouth! Oh, my God, Steven! It was wiggling!”

“Shut it, Mueller! I’m going through something right now!” Steve shouted as he righted himself and pushed his sodden hair from his eyes.

Mandy whipped her head in Steve’s direction, whining pitifully, “I’m in crisis, Steve! Have a heart, won’t you!? Something was alive! In my mouth!”

Steve’s head shot up in her direction as he exclaimed belligerently, “Are you still wearing my goddamn glasses, Mueller!?”

“Uh, um, well,” She stammered anxiously, beginning to crawl away on her hands and knees as Steve began shouting at her, before building up enough momentum to return to running away from Harrington, who remained hot on her heels.

A crowd had formed on the outdoor patio around Becky, Tommy, Carol, and Billy, himself, and all the onlookers were howling with laughter as the soaked duo continued slipping on the wet lawn. 

Mandy kept out of Steve’s grasp by leading him through direct torrents of water, each time causing him to fall behind and wipe at his eyes as she continued on, eyes protected by Harrington’s glasses. She began wheezing with breathless laughter as she turned to watch Steve sputter against the jets of water, and promptly stumbled over a lawn ornament, heels flying up over her head when she slammed to the ground with a girly shout of distress.

“That’s my mom’s garden topiary!” Becky cried out indignantly, and Mandy somehow heard her, waving her arm in the air before pushing it up right and sprinting off just before Steve caught her around the middle.

“It’s good, Babe! I didn’t even break it! How lucky, right?!” Mandy called jubilantly as she barreled into the crowd, slipping right by Billy with a devious smirk that he was nearly positive was for his eyes only. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. Probably the second thing, he realized with a curl of his lip, watching Steve Harrington try to shoulder past him. Billy gave a little shove back, and Steve stumbled, eyeing him coldly before continuing to weave through the crowd and disappearing from sight. As the crowd dispersed, Billy got lost in the flow, completely missing the rest of whatever altercation had happened between Harrington and Mueller much to his dismay. 

He had just got himself another drink and settled onto the couch with a brunette that had caught his eye from across the living room, when the sounds of doors slamming sounded from upstairs, ensnaring his attention. He glanced up the staircase just in time to watch as Mandy bounded down the steps slightly out of breath, yelling to the crowd below her in the living room, “If you hear any shouting coming from the upstairs closet, don’t open it! It’s a ghost, probably! Actually, y’know what? Don’t even worry about it, forget I even mentioned it!” 

The distinct, muffled curses of one Steve Harrington sounded through the walls, and the sound of a doorknob jiggling was heard over the music. The girl beside him giggled, covering her mouth with a delicate hand, “Oh, my God, Mandy Mueller’s at it again!”

Billy looked to her curiously, leaning forward to sit up instead of his position sprawled across the back of the couch, “What do you mean?”

The girl, Cassandra, turned to face him with a scoff, “Has no one told you? Seriously? Back when Mueller was a freshman she was always acting out like this. She used to hang out with this small group of seniors and a guy named Matthew Carmichael. He was like, _sooo…_ ”

Cassandra cut herself off abruptly, trying remove the dreamy look on her face as she cleared her throat, “Anyway, she got into a couple of fights with the older boys, y’know. She locked one of them in a freezer, once, and this other time, she tried to shove Matt’s hand in a garbage disposal, so there you go.”

Billy’s brows twitched at her words, watching as the girl in question strolled through the room, looking anything but innocent as she smiled at the world. Of course he’d manage to feel something for a girl who looked her most diabolical when she was smiling. Of fucking course. He was so fucked up. 

And what made him even more fucked up, was all the shit he just heard made him like her even more. Mandy Mueller really had him fooled when they first met. He had thought she was just some prissy girl, and the whole time she was a crazy bitch who did her own dirty work. He licked his lips, and swallowed hard. He couldn’t tell if his mouth was dry or salivating at the thought. What a good little liar Mandy Mueller was. He wondered what other secrets she kept. He wondered how he could get her to spill them. 

Billy took a long sip of his drink.

“Wanna play a game?” He questioned abruptly as he turned to Cassandra, who smirked at him in reply.

* * *

Some fatass named TJ Barker was playing a drum beat on his stomach, and Mandy was tossing her head back and laughing hysterically at him in the kitchen. It was really grinding Billy’s gears. He watched as Mueller shoved a piece of pizza into her mouth and chewed, grinning at the boy beside her, before slapping his belly so hard she left a red welt on his skin as he cried out. That made Billy smirk maliciously.

“Ooh! I like that sound more!” Mandy cackled as the boy rubbed his rapidly reddening skin, “Did you hear it?! Let me do it again!” 

“Ah! No, Mandy!!” TJ jerked away from her, turning his body to hide his bare stomach from her reach, and she laughed even louder, sounding more diabolical than ever before when she retorted.

“Two for flinching, Bitch!” She exclaimed, whacking the boy’s ass twice in quick succession. He yelped, jumping, before laughing along with her. He turned toward her again, tentative and smiling. 

Billy just didn’t get it. Mandy Mueller blew him off time and time again, and hung out with losers like TJ Barker, who Billy was nearly positive was in band. Actually, Billy paused, maybe something else just as tragically lame. The debate team, or something, he didn’t fucking know for sure—did this high school have a chess club? But the thought was still standing—what the fuck was wrong with her? Billy Hargrove was a fresh, juicy piece of meat and she was going for… rotting scraps. He couldn’t figure what the fuck was going through her mind. He was starting to see what people meant when they called her crazy.

Abruptly, Mandy shouted out and waved her arms around, smacking Barker right across the face with an arm as he busied himself with staring at her tits. Billy really couldn’t believe how pathetic the guy was—it was like he hadn’t ever seen a female before. Honestly, Billy was one wrong look away from kicking his ass.

“Oh, this is my song!” She proclaimed, promptly breaking into a slow melody, “ _Oh, Momma, I can hear you acryin’, you’re so scared and all alone. Hangman is coming’ down from the gallows, and I don’t have very long—_ “

Styx’s Renegade blared over the stereo system, and she was on her feet, out of the kitchen and leaving Barker all by his lonesome. Billy watched her go, kicking her feet out and stepping onto the couch before springing onto the dining room table, alternating from swaying her hips to banging her head and sending her hair flying everywhere. He sighed wistfully, crossing his arms as he watched her stomp onto the table with another girl, making the wood beneath both of them tremble with every beat. One of them knocked over a vase, but neither stopped, and Mandy shouted out the words to the song belligerently.

“ _The jig is up! The news is out! They’ve finally found—_ “ She was shouting to the ceiling, when a voice called over the music.

“Mueller!” Mandy froze before her eyes darted in the direction of the voice, and Billy spotted Steve at the same time Mueller did, eyebrows quirking up at the sight of Harrington completely disordered and sweating on the staircase over-looking the living area. Steve pointed a warped wire hanger in Mandy’s direction with blatant intention. That must have been how he got out, Billy thought. No one went to rescue Harrington, and for some reason, that tickled Billy beyond measure. It looked like King Steve was losing the favor of his people. Billy could see some opportunity on the horizon for him.

Mandy wasted no time in making her escape, jumping from the table and grabbing onto the stain-glass chandelier, before swinging from the ceiling, tearing out a huge clump of plaster, and collapsing to the floor haplessly while taking the light-fixture along with her. Billy’s eyes widened along with everyone else’s as they waited for her to make a sound after her fall, and when she didn’t, Billy found himself pushing through the crowd that formed. He ran right into a wide-eyed Steve Harrington, and both worked their way to the front, shoulder-to-shoulder.

When they reached the front, Mandy was grumbling and blinking up at the hole in the ceiling.

“Mueller, did you really think the light was gonna hold you?” Steve asked in a sigh, looking down at her with minimum sympathy. Billy looked at him with barely contained indignation.

“Is now the fucking time for a lecture, Harrington?” Billy bit out from beside the boy, and Steve shot him a dirty look in reply as he continued, “You’re fucking unbelievable, y’know?”

Mandy wobbled into a sitting position, grimacing, “I busted some serious ass, ugh.”

“Oh, so you’re alive,” Billy announced, swiveling his head from Steve to face Mueller again, smirking down at her bedraggled form, “Well, ain’t that just splendid, Queenie. And here I was, ready to resuscitate.”

“Oh, thanks,” She snarked in a huff, sending a pinched, painful wince in his direction, “You’re a real peach, Hargrove.” 

“Well, you know me,” He smiled cockily down at her before bending forward to yank her to her feet, she whimpered as she was upright, face contorted with pain as she clung to his arms like a toddler. Her finger nails dug into the leather of his jacket as she tried to work out the kinks in her stiff neck.

“Yeah, and I wish I didn’t,” She muttered under her breath, and Billy smirked even wider when he caught her words. 

“Mandy—!” Steve began, and Mandy shot him a nasty look, taking off his glasses abruptly and flinging them into the throng of teens at her back. Steve gave a bewildered shout of distress in reply, cutting off whatever admonishment he was ready to give, and Billy beamed at the horrified expression on Harrington’s face. Oh, Mueller really knew how to bring out the worst in people, and he was over the fucking moon that the person she loved tormenting the most was Steve Harrington.

Mandy paid no mind to Steve’s reaction, rubbing her eyes miserably, before looking to Billy with her crystalline gaze, “Do I look like a did a little crying just now?”

Billy furrowed his brows, “No, why? Did you?”

Mandy placed an offended hand to her chest as she gasped sarcastically, “I would never! This is character assassination, Hargrove! You’ll be hearing from my lawyer within the next three to five business days!”

He smirked at her reaction, shaking his head at her and watching as she groaned and rubbed her ass with a constipated expression, before hobbling off into the crowd and leaving Billy standing next to her mess just as Becky Chapman arrived on the scene. Becky eyed him with blatant contempt, and he knew he was in trouble.

Well, fuck. 

Mandy Mueller was nothing but fucking trouble, honestly. She was a miserable fucking tease, and a hoity-toity little bitch who created chaos wherever she went, but did he still want to fuck her? Hell yes. Was it stupid of him to want a girl who was adamant on hating him? Hell yes it was, but he was planning to change that very soon. Billy Hargrove was going to melt Ice Queen Mandy Mueller if it was the last damn thing he did. That sneaky little bitch was going to be putty in his fucking hands when he was done with her. He was going to make her want him like she had never wanted anything before.

“Are you serious right now?!” Becky Chapman screamed as Billy turned tail and slipped into the crowd, disappearing from sight easily, “Billy! Come back here!!”

“No!” Billy called back once he was out of sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so lol if you hated this chapter don't worry next chapter is gonna be more fun b/c ELEVEN ENCOUNTERS BILLY AND THEN STEVE AND TOMMY AND CAROL WILL BE IN IT!!! AND! I! AM! SO! EXCITED!! like BitCH when I tell ya that I love tommy&carol I mean it like they are so petty and horrible and alSO COUPLE GOALS??? like they're such dicks, right??? but also, they've been dating since like 7th grade in canon???? guys guys guuuUUUYYYYSSS when I tell you they are my fav douchebags I mean it lol like i know that everyone hates them b/c they're evil bUT PLEASE!!! please?? Please?!!?!?! they're an untapped comedy gold-mine I sweaaarrrrr y'all might actually like them in the next few chapters???


	8. Boys Go to Jupiter (Except That One)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eleven finds a task for Mandy that suits her special talents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i'm just gonna get this out here earlier than I planned b/c i'll probably be too busy near the end of this week (and maybe even next week tbh lol) and what the hell right??? it's done pretty much so w/e ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ I only wrote the one draft but tbh i kinda love it the way it is so I'm releasing it into the wild
> 
> also y'all wanted some mandy and billy interaction??? right??? right??????? ask and ye shall receive :)

“Where are you?” A muffled voice sounded from somewhere in the recesses of her mind, and Mandy blinked, tearing her eyes away from the beautiful, swirling, burning gases shining before her eyes. 

“Where the hell have you been, you brat?!” Mandy shouted, ignoring the question entirely as she swam around Eleven’s head. Eleven rose her brows, and it was then that Mandy noticed her tamed hair and changed demeanor. Something had happened since the last time they had talked, and Mandy couldn’t figure out what it was. 

“Busy,” She replied in her soft tone, black eyes glittering with the reflection of all the astral bodies around them. Mandy caught fleeting images of a woman she felt like she should have known, and bus rides, and a girl with kohl-lined eyes, and then felt the rising anger and mounting frustration. All of that was followed up with a fuzzy, warm feeling and sensation of finality. _Finally_ , her head had echoed, and Mandy felt like she could cry from all the overwhelming sensations she was picking up from Eleven. A boy’s face entered her mind, and Mandy rose her brows at the implication.

“With a boy?” Mandy asked blandly, sounding more judgmental than she really ought to have, “For over a week?”

It was Eleven’s turn to ignore her question as she asked again, “Where are you?”

“Somewhere outside the Milky Way, I think,” Mandy answered, swimming through the inky star-spangled sky, before floating down to appear standing beside the girl and pointing into the distant, glittering specks that surrounded the space around them, “That’s earth all the way over there, Kiddo.”

“Earth?” Eleven repeated, “Where we live?”

“Yep,” Mandy answered, diving into the sky and floating past a supernova, blocking out the vibrant light it emitted briefly, “And this is outer space.”

Eleven looked around them, taking in all the glowing things around them with silent contemplation, before looking to Mandy with worry shining in her eyes, “Why are you all the way out here? I can barely feel you.”

Mandy looked to her, expression even, “I don’t know. I just come out here now.”

“Why?” Eleven asked sharply.

Mandy shrugged, “Gives you perspective, doesn’t it?”

Eleven shook her head in the negative, and Mandy looked to her with barely concealed frustration, “No? Not at all? Doesn’t make you contemplate the infinite nature of all things, or anything? Really, nothing at all?”

Eleven continued to shake her head, but a small smile pulled at the corner of her lips.

Mandy sighed, before twisting her body around an asteroid belt, “I don’t know. I can’t help it, really. I fall asleep, and end up out here sometimes.”

That seemed to catch Eleven’s attention, “Only when you fall asleep?”

Mandy rose her brows, “Sometimes I—I don’t know. Sometimes, I think I’m out here still, but I’ll be awake and doing things. It’s like being two places at once, or maybe nowhere at all. Ugh, I don’t know. It’s been a troublesome week without you around, Honey.”

“Sorry I left you,” Eleven replied easily, and Mandy turned to her and smiled with sincerity.

“Thanks, I appreciate the sentiment,” Eleven smiled in reply, and Mandy beamed even brighter, “Wanna see something cool?”

Eleven nodded, looking around in excitement, and Mandy tore space and time open for her, letting all the pretty little secrets fall out for her to see. They soared through stars and galaxies, and jumped from icy planets to desert planets, and hopped across astroid belts like children hopping through puddles. And then, Mandy showed Eleven some of the brightest lights, and what sat in the middle of them.

As she pointed to a vibrant quasar, Mandy turned to Eleven with a severe look, “Don’t be fooled, Honey. You have to stay away from the bright ones, they have darkness right in the middle.”

“What do you mean?” Eleven squinted to her, half her face illuminated in a fiery glow.

“A black hole is in the middle of that,” Mandy explained, gesturing to it, “It can swallow you up, and sometimes, you won’t come back.”

Eleven looked at her with confusion, and Mandy showed her memories of pink-purple-red lights and hazy, glowing gases, and in the middle, a pitch black that had her tumbling down, down, _down_. It was the sensation of gravity baring down on her, and also the sensation of floating and choking right under the surface of the ocean. And then she was slamming back to earth again, but it wasn’t home. It was all wrong, and when she realized she had been to that place before, her whole body quaked all over. She glowed like a Christmas tree, and all the decay around her slunk away—

“Upside down,” Eleven breathed to her, “You’ve been there.”

“What?” Mandy blurted out.

“The Upside Down, that place,” Eleven explained, “I’ve been there before.”

Mandy’s eyes widened, “Really? How’d you get from this world to there?”

Eleven shook her head, “The wall opened for me.”

Mandy’s brows furrowed then, “What? A portal just opened for you? Like a door?”

Eleven shrugged, and Mandy looked back to the distant, glowing light, pondering, “Huh, I wonder how that works.”

Eleven fed her images of squelching flesh being torn apart, and stepping through the mucus-y membrane into the real world, and Mandy curled her lip in disgust. Ugh, she imagined that was what being born was like, and it grossed her out.

“How’d you get there, though?” Mandy inquired aloud, and Eleven cocked her head, showing her visions of a great, ugly monster and a fucking awful pain exploding in her cranium, before she blinked and found herself in an empty version of the world she just left. Mandy’s eyes widened. Had Eleven actually just transported herself there by accident? And her whole physical form, at that?

“Like that,” She answered when she took in Mandy’s expression, and then questioned softly, “Can I show you something?”

Mandy perked up, allowing the girl to blink her away to another location. They appeared before a quiet street and a darkened house, and Mandy shook her head to rid herself of the lingering images of burning lights in the sky. Eleven walked through the house, Mandy following her lead up the staircase, before she gave pause, hearing a whispered voice.

“Yeah—no, I get it, I’ll let you sleep,” Nancy Wheeler’s voice sounded from behind a closed door, and Mandy blinked owlishly. She was in Nancy Wheeler’s fucking house! She whirled around wildly, taking in all the decoration around her. Ugh, it really did make sense, actually. It wasn’t that the house was ugly or anything, but it was so quintessentially Wheeler that she was a little upset with herself for being so slow on the uptake. Nancy’s voice broke through her inner toiling, “No, it’s okay, Jonathan, really. I’ll be fine, I’m just going to go lay down now.”

Mandy sped towards the girl’s voice, and Eleven gave her an unimpressed look as she osmosed through Nancy’s door. Her room was pink and pretty standard, walls lined with books and photographs, and the girl herself sat in the middle of her bed with her phone next to her on the mattress, clutching a stuffed bear to her chest. Mandy looked to her disappointedly, before plopping down onto the bed beside her. Mandy really wished the kids at her school did other shit besides cry by themselves when no one was around. Even fucking Billy Hargrove went home and sulked the one time she bothered to check. It was unbelievable to her.

With a sigh, she tried to reach out to the girl in question, only for her hand to disappear right through her head. Nancy shuddered in reply, shaking off the phantom feeling of Mandy’s hand, and Mandy looked down to her limb as it reappeared with a blackened glistening bundle of thread in the middle of her palm. Confused, Mandy rolled the slick strands between her fingertips, watching as it disintegrated like sand falling through her fingers. Eleven sat beside her then, looking to her open hand in question, and Nancy yawned tiredly from beside them, standing and moving to set her pink phone back onto her desk.

“Did you see that?” Mandy asked in a quick hush, looking to Eleven in bewilderment, “I think I just pulled that black thing out of Wheeler’s head! How the hell did I do that?!”

Eleven looked to her with helpless wide eyes, and Mandy groaned in reply when she realized just how clueless she was. Eleven moved shit with her mind, and she was still just as fucking clueless as Mandy! When would she find a Mr. Miyagi around here already? Mandy just wished someone would have an answer for fucking once!

Wheeler sighed quietly from the other side of the room, before moving back to the bed and pulling back the covers. Mandy hopped to her feet and tip-toed to the other side of the bed where Nancy laid. Eleven looked on with poorly hidden impatience.

As Nancy turned and curled in on herself, Mandy dropped to the ground beside the bed and peeked over the edge of the mattress to stare into Wheeler’s unwitting face. Wetting her lips, Mandy focused all her being on sticking her hand into Nancy’s head and pulling something good out.

“Don’t do that!” Eleven shouted to her, and Mandy’s hand froze mid-air.

“What? Why not?” Mandy whined out.

“You don’t know what you’re doing!” Eleven admonished in a startling display, “You could do something bad to her!”

That made her give pause, and Mandy leaned away from Nancy’s prone form as said girl’s eyes were slowly shutting on their own. With a sigh, she stood and shrugged, “Alright, I guess you’re right, but aren’t you curious at all? Don’t you want to know what I just did? How I did it? Any of that?”

Eleven looked at her with disappointment and judgement in her eyes as she reiterated, “But you could _hurt_ her.”

Mandy sighed and hopped up to her feet, looking as miserable as she felt while muttering to herself, “How come every time I think I’m gonna figure something out, someone always has to ruin it for me?”

Eleven rolled her eyes in reply, before shifting the room around them until they were in a less pink room. Mandy stared at Eleven with a disgruntled expression as they reappeared in the new location, ignoring what the young girl was showing her in favor of saying aloud, “It’s all so unfair.”

Eleven gave her an unimpressed look, pinching her lips for a split moment, and both girls stared to one another in a sullen, all encompassing silence. The figure in bed rolled over, and Eleven’s eyes broke their challenge, leaving Mandy to blink stupidly into the empty space before her. Squinting, she looked around as Eleven marched around the room to the side of the bed—the room was small, blue, and filled with toys and nerdy paraphernalia. Mandy sighed—of course, a boy. She couldn’t escape boys anywhere except outer space, it seemed. Star Wars posters hung on the wall and biology charts stood propped up near the door, and Mandy was so engrossed with peering onto the desktop and trying to figure out all the different figurines there, that she was startled when Eleven called out to her.

Mandy pranced over, looking down at the face of the boy who was now sitting up and rubbing his eyes tiredly, “Ooh, is he your weird little boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend?” Eleven echoed, looking to her with concern, and Mandy shrugged.

“It’s probably for the best you don’t know that word,” Mandy replied blandly, “Boys are gross, anyway.”

Eleven shook her head, lips quirking up in the corner, “Not Mike.”

Mandy rolled her eyes, pointing to the dark-haired boy as he squinted into the darkness in a similarly stupid-looking fashion as Mandy, “Is that his name?”

“Eleven?” He whispered into the night, and Mandy shrieked, jumping away from him as he asked again, only a little louder, “El? Is that you?”

“Fuck! He can see you!” Mandy shouted, pointing accusingly to Eleven as the young girl hung her head and shook it out.

“No, he can’t see me,” Eleven explained, a small smile appearing on her lips, “Only you can see me. He feels me.”

Mandy stood stock-still at the younger girl’s words and the look on her face. This boy, Mike, could feel Eleven, and Eleven came to visit him in the night. Mandy looked between the two, both staring into each other’s eyes, even if Mike Wheeler— _Nancy Wheeler’s little brother!_ —couldn’t even see the girl before him. It looked like true fucking love, and it made a part of Mandy Mueller want to curl up and die. It almost disgusted her, and she had to temper her emotions in the moment. Mandy floated through time and space on the daily, and had seen some of the darkest aspects to the human consciousness, but the most terrifying, alien thing she had ever bore witness to was this moment. The tenderness and quiet understanding seemed like an insult to her eyes. Mandy turned away.

Eleven turned to Mandy with a look of confusion, and Mandy rocked on her feet uncomfortably. She knew the younger girl was picking up on her emotions, and Mandy tried not to look guilty of her previous thoughts.

“So,” Mandy cleared her throat, trying to sound less discomfited than she actually was, “This is Mike—not your boyfriend. Why did you bring me here?”

Mandy got flashes of a boisterous boy with a gap tooth and snotty nose as Eleven announced, “Mouth breather."

“He has a bully?” Mandy snorted, “Your nerdy ‘not-boyfriend’ has a bully? Why don’t you just send him to the damn moon, then?”

Eleven shook her head with disappointment, “Can’t.”

“Why not?” Mandy asked with an amused smile.

“I can’t be stupid,” Eleven explained, and Mandy furrowed her brows for a moment.

“Are you still hiding out in that creepy cabin?” Mandy asked when the thought occurred to her, and Eleven nodded, “From the bad men? They’re still after you?”

Eleven confirmed her suspicions with a hard look, “I told you. I can’t be stupid…”

Mandy could feel the ‘but’ that was coming before the girl even finished her statement.

“But you—“ Mandy waved her arms around wildly to cut her off.

“But me nothing! I’m not going to kick the ass of some snotty boy for your little boyfriend! No way! It’s not even worth it! Boys are not worth all of that!” Mandy yelled with a frightening amount of tenacity, to which Eleven simply glared.

“Not for just a _boy!_ ” Eleven shouted right back, “Boys are gross! Mike is not!”

Mandy threw her arms in the air, “Oh, please! All boys are gross deep down, Kid. You might not see it now, but don’t worry—you’ll see it eventually!”

Eleven balled her fists, “Don’t talk about him like that! He’s my friend! And friends protect each other!”

Mandy shook her head in dismay as she crossed her arms, “You’re young, Honey. You don’t get it. You will when you’re old.”

Mandy fed her memories—of being stood up on her first date, of having her first boyfriend call her fat and ugly in the dark recesses of his mind, of a boy grabbing her ass and trying to kiss her at her first party, of her teacher back home who looked at little girls in a way that made Mandy want to tear out his eyes, and all the terrible little things and ways boys were in their very nature. Eleven looked at her with pursed lips.

Shaking her head slowly, Eleven announced with a firm determination, “Not Mike.”

Mandy wanted to scream and cry at how stupid she was being. Eleven was just so naive that it made Mandy want to tear her own hair out. She couldn’t decide whether she wanted to protect her or rip to shreds. Mandy got slow, dreamy memories of being cold and scared and the youthful face of Mike Wheeler looking into her eyes, taking her into the warmth of his home and tending to her like a wounded bird. He looked soft and kind, and Mandy resented the images in her head. He was patient, and tried to understand, and was her first friend. Mike Wheeler elevated her and protected her against a world that had been cruel and cold and pushed her down for so long. Mike Wheeler was different, Eleven’s mind whispered, so very different. 

Mandy was rendered wordless as she came upon a single thought of her own: Mike Wheeler was an exception to a previously unbroken rule. And an ugly, evil part of Mandy’s heart ached at the realization. A boy like Mike Wheeler would probably survive the world, but he would never be able to thrive in it. Not with mean, snotty little boys around. For as much as she fussed about it aloud, Mandy had her mind made up very quickly.

“So, mouth breather?” Eleven repeated, looking to her with a stony expression, “You better scare him.”

Mandy chuckled, scratching the back of her head as she looked between Mike Wheeler’s unwitting form and Eleven’s determined expression.

“I would just like to say again,” Mandy began with an uncomfortable edge to her voice, “Boys really aren’t shit, Honey.”

“So? He’s Mike,” Eleven replied without missing a beat, “And you’re gonna make him stop, right? The mouth breather?”

“Yeah, I’ll see what I can do, or whatever,” Mandy nodded begrudgingly, and Eleven rolled her eyes in reply.

“Not ‘or whatever’,” Eleven demanded, and Mandy huffed, stomping a ghostly foot.

“Fine! I’ll make that troll regret ever messing with your gross little boyfriend!” Mandy shouted viciously, making Eleven give her an exasperated look.

“You’re being heinous,” Eleven announced, and Mandy snorted.

“You don’t even know the meaning of the word,” Mandy quipped flippantly, and Eleven gave her a dirty look in reply that had her suspecting she really did not know the meaning of the word. Mandy guffawed at the girl’s reaction as Mike turned on his lamp beside his bed and looked around the room in confusion.

Squinting in concentration, the younger boy’s eyes swept through the room, sliding right over Mandy and Eleven without pause, “I could have sworn—“

“Look, he heard you,” Eleven called, looking willful and defiant, “Because you’re a big mouth.”

Mandy gasped, eyes alight with bemusement at the younger girl’s declaration, “Oh, my God, El! You can’t just call someone a big mouth, it’s uncouth!”

“Uncouth?” Eleven’s face screwed up at the word.

“Tactless,” Mandy explained, and when Eleven looked even more confused, expanded further, “Rude, hurtful.”

Eleven’s face lit up with understanding as she nodded, before she replied with a shrug, “Still true.”

* * *

Mandy had to park her car next to Billy Hargrove’s the next morning to scan through the annoying little middle schoolers filing into campus, and it fucking tormented her. She sat in her parked car, staring straight ahead to avoid looking in his direction. Even worse, ghostly Eleven was sitting in the passenger’s seat looking particularly impatient for her to get her ass in gear. 

Leaning around Mandy’s torso, Eleven spied Billy Hargrove looking over with raised brows and smirk on his face. The younger girl flopped back into her seat before looking to Mandy apprehensively, “Mouth breather?”

Mandy was coming to find the title referred to any boy who was a bully or simply awful in general. With a sigh, she hung her head as she whispered passed gritted teeth, “Worse.”

“How?” Eleven inquired with genuine curiosity lacing her tone, and Mandy tossed her head back, unable to answer the real reason without embarrassment flooding her. 

Billy _fucking_ Hargrove had a gross little perverted crush on her. He was a pest before, but now he was worse, because she could read his mind and see just how much he actually _liked_ her. Everything she did was the greatest thing, and she hated it! He wasn’t allowed to be genuinely attracted to her awful personality! It was the only thing she had left to protect herself from the world!! He was so gross!!

Eleven rose her brows expectantly when Mandy didn’t answer, so Mandy turned to her with a look of subtle repulsion, “He’s grosser than your average mouth breather, just trust me. I can’t even begin to explain. Just try to never grow up, Honey. It’s the worst.”

A girl walked around the car, and Eleven’s gaze locked onto the back of her vibrant red hair with great intensity. Mandy’s eyes followed the girl as well, before darting back to Eleven, and then back to the girl like a game of ping-pong. From beside her, Mandy heard the thump of Hargrove’s stereo system as it blared The Scorpions’ ‘No One Like You’.

“ _Babe, it wasn’t easy to leave you alone, its getting harder each time that I go, If I had a choice, I would stay,_ ” Ugh, he was so annoying! Even his music was irritating, “ _There’s no one like you, I can’t wait for the nights with you, I imagine the things that we’ll do, I just wanna be loved by you—_ “

God, why couldn’t he just fall in love with some other unsuspecting psychotic girl!? Amy fucking Radner’s schedule was looking pretty open, and that would be an easy in! Mandy’s mind was in the middle of screeching at her as she whipped her head in his direction. He was already looking at her from behind a pair of too-cool fucking sunglasses, and she was absolutely livid! He even had the audacity to bite his lip. Mandy fucking hated him. Couldn’t he just catch a hint and get lost? Mandy was busy with some real life-altering shit at the moment, and his bullshit was not appreciated. She needed something to drown him out.

“Alright, that’s it, you piece of shit. I’m about to show you how it’s motherfucking done,” Mandy muttered, slapping her radio on and reaching into the back seat of her car to search through her various tapes. She grabbed a handful and brought them to her lap to shuffle through. They exploded in every direction as her hands were too small to hold them all at once. Mandy could just see in her head the dumb, smarmy expression Hargrove was giving her without even needing to look. Prick. With a sigh, she began tossing cassettes everywhere as she looked for the one she wanted, before spying the perfect song.

Mandy slid in the tape, listening to the whirring of her player before the opening chords of the song began to play, and she cranked the volume. She flipped open her visor and took her glasses from under it, slipping them on as the first chorus opened.

“ _If you’re having trouble with the high school head, he’s givin’ you the blues, you wanna graduate, but not in his bed, here’s what you gotta do—_ “ Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap blared from her stereo system, and Eleven gave her a significantly underwhelmed look. Mandy turned in her seat to flip off Hargrove, who sat in his car, laughing at her song of choice. She stuck her tongue out at him, and he laughed even harder, tossing his sunglasses on the dashboard to give her a heated look. Blegh, Mandy screwed her face up in distress as she heard Eleven sigh exasperatedly in her direction.

“What?” Mandy spun around to question ardently, and Eleven only shook her head with a quirk of her brows, “What?!”

“You missed him,” Eleven explained with an unimpressed glance, gesturing to Mike Wheeler getting back up from the ground a few yards away and dusting himself off with the help of his friends as another group of boys marched off with wide shoulders and matching shit-eating grins. Mandy cursed. Fucking Billy Hargrove! 

She threw open her car door, ignoring the fact that she left her car running and stereo system rumbling as she marched down the hill that led to the middle school with the look of a demon freshly risen from hell.

“Hey, you little fucking trolls!” Mandy screeched, and Eleven’s phantom form that had trailed behind her jumped a little, her eyebrows rising almost all the way to her hairline. All the little kids around her jumped as well, some even letting out terrified screams as others gasped, “Did you just knock this kid off his bike, Punk? You like picking fights?”

“Oh, my God,” A squeaky voice whispered, “Is that Mandy Mueller? She’s the coolest girl in high school!”

Another whispered back, “Remember how she got hit by that car?”

“Why is she defending Mike Wheeler? He’s a total nerd-o-rama,” The first voice asked, and the second replied, “Mitchell is Amy Radner’s little brother, duh. That’s the girl who hit her with the car!”

Fuck. Mandy could not get away from people who didn’t like her. This whole town was filled with people she picked fights with, it seemed. Some stupid, disloyal part of her head yelled to her: Maybe you should quit picking fights with people, Mandy! And she didn’t need that kind of negativity in the moment, so she held a big pillow over that voice’s mouth until it fucking asphyxiated and died out completely. Why was one half of her so stupid and annoying all the time? She hated it.

Mitchell Radner turned around, all his friends turning to face her slowly with identical wide-eyed looks. The freckled boy in question sat in the middle of four other little snot-nosed boys, and pointed to himself tentatively.

“Yeah, that’s right, I’m talkin’ to you, Bitch,” Mandy hissed with a wicked grin on her face as she squared her shoulders and pointed viciously in the little boy’s direction, “You think you’re gonna get away with that shit? Not while I’m around, Shitbird.”

“Y-you don’t know what you’re talking about,” He shrugged, somehow looking both terrorized and cocky, and Mandy was going to break him, she decided then. He wasn’t going to think he could be brave for his little friends, not while she was the one staring him down. She stalked up to him in three quick strides, raising her arm to strike, and he stumbled back, the whole group falling over themselves to get away from her.

“You callin’ me a liar, you little shithead? Is that what I’m hearing from you?” Mandy asked into the deathly silence, and all the boys behind him began shaking their heads. 

“No, he did it!” One boy yelled, and Mike Wheeler’s group of friends began chittering amongst themselves behind her.

“Now you’re gonna get it!” A voice shouted from behind her, and she was positive it was one of Mike Wheeler’s friends. 

“Well, are you, you little fucker?” Mandy sneered lowly, before both her voice and arm raised threateningly, “I’m not hearing an answer! And it’s starting to really piss me off!!”

“No! I-I-I—I’m not saying that! I wouldn’t say that!” The boy replied, shaking his head vehemently.

“Oh, well, that’s good,” Mandy plastered a wide smile on her face, laughing easily as she dropped her raised arm, “See! And here I thought I was gonna have to come down here and teach you a lesson, but you’re a well mannered little shit, aren’t you? I’m sure you didn’t even mean to knock over this boy, so you can go ahead and apologize now.”

“Uh,” Radner’s little brother began fitfully, and Mandy rose her brows.

“Go on,” Mandy goaded with a slow, warning voice, “He’s waiting. Now say you’re sorry, and that you’ll never do it again.”

The boy narrowed his eyes at her willfully, pursing his lips and clenching his fists as he quivered slightly.

“You hard of hearing all of a sudden?! I said apologize!” Mandy screamed, her brows drawn down and her lips curling back from her teeth, “Do you think I’m joking? Do you think what happened to your dumb as shit sister was a fluke? You think I won’t do it again?! You think I won’t do worse to you, you little troll?!”

The boy let out a small ‘meep’ without meaning to, before stammering out, “M-Mik-ke—I’m s-so-orr-ry.” 

“Uh,” Mike Wheeler replied from behind her, but Mandy was completely ignoring him as she continued to raise her voice to the young boy, “Thanks, I guess.”

“You better be, you stupid little shit. If I ever catch you fucking with those kids again, I’ll be back, and what your butt-ugly sister got won’t be shit compared to what you’ll get from me. You think I’m playing around here? You try that shit again, and I’m gonna fucking kill you, got it? Your sad little family will be going down to the morgue to find you cold on a metal fucking table, and when they get there, they won’t be recognizing you after I’ve had my way with you. So, you better not even fucking _think_ about it— _better not even look_ in that kid’s direction ever again, got it?” Mandy’s tirade caught the attention of some of the older student’s by that time, and she spied Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers to the right of her with similar looks of bewilderment.

“Holy shit,” A voice whispered from behind her, “Did you hear what she just said about the—ow!”

“Dude, shut up!” Another interrupted in a hiss.

The boy before her was nodding to her fervently, eyes looking watery but not yet crying, and knees knocking in terror.

“Say it,” She hissed lowly, “Say you got it.”

“I-I-I—“ He began, his voice trembling,

“ _You-You-You_ ,” Mandy mocked in a whiny voice, before seething, “You what? Say it!”

“G-go—ot it,” The boy nodded, lips wobbling as he tried not to cry, “I g-g-got it.”

“Oh, well, that’s good,” Mandy smiled down at him, smacking her hand on top of his head and ruffling his hair as he jumped under his skin, “Now, be a good boy and run along.”

When she removed her hand from his head, the Radner boy looked like he was having an out-of-body experience, backing robotically away from her with a traumatized expression on his freckled face, and Mandy smiled prettily as she called out, “And make sure you say hi to your sister for me, Honey. I really do miss her!”

The boy looked to her with a constipated expression as he turned and fled as fast as possible from her. She put her hands in her pockets as she turned on her heel, ready to march off.

“That was—!” A feminine voice shouted, and Mandy spotted a small redhead waving her arms around frantically before placing both her hands on top of her head in disbelief.

“Amazing! You’re amazing! I think I’m in love with you!” A boy in a cap finished for the girl, and Mandy’s brows rose from behind her sunglasses.

The other boys nodded along, before Mike Wheeler stepped forwards tentatively with the same awkward smile his older sister had given her countless times before, “Thanks, it really was amazing.”

“He’s a punk, and his sister’s a bitch,” Mandy announced coldly, shuffling a little on her feet in discomfort, “I really didn’t even do it for you, so don’t get any ideas.”

Eleven rolled her eyes at her from over Wheeler’s shoulder, and Mandy scowled deeply in the invisible girl’s direction.

“Yeah, but you did it, anyway,” Mike nodded, giving a tight-lipped smile, “Thanks to you, we probably won’t have anyone picking on us ever again, so…”

“Right,” Mandy sniffed, starting to feel really uncomfortable all of a sudden from the sincerity in his tone. Blegh, she’d rather be suffer through Billy Hargrove’s demented methods over this gooey shit.

“Why’d you do that, though?” Another boy stepped forward, looking both intimidated and determined, “You had no reason to do that, so why?”

“I had my reasons,” Mandy shrugged, smirking easily as she pivoted in the direction of her car, leaving the group with a taunting, “I can come up with, like, eleven reasons, right off the top of my head, actually.”

And with those last words, she stalked off, leaving the silent group in her wake, and the second she was out of ear shot, they were scrambling to gather around each other. Eleven was at her wing, smiling to her with a blinding smile and skipping along side her as she looked between Mandy and the group they were leaving behind.

“Thanks,” Eleven called, “Even if it was spooky.”

“You said to scare him,” Mandy reminded, as she walked back to her car, finding her stereo playing You Shook Me All Night Long with Billy Hargrove leaning against the back of her little convertible, a grin on his face.

Ugh.

“So,” He began with his lips holding a fresh cigarette.

“He likes you,” Eleven announced with no warning, and Mandy whipped her head over her right shoulder to give the girl venomous glare.

“Do not start,” Mandy tossed her head back towards Hargrove, but her words were also for Eleven’s ears. She held a warning hand up before his face that he merely leaned away from as he pulled a lighter out of his leather jacket’s pocket and turned to light a cigarette away from her face.

“You like AC DC, huh?” He asked, flicking his lighter closed while taking a quick puff of his cig, and Mandy rolled her eyes dismissively as she moved around him to the driver’s side door.

Billy trotted after her, his body looming right at her back, and Mandy gave him a warning look over her shoulder. His mind crowed at the dirty look— _ooh, Mandy, Mandy, you and your sexy little temper; if only you knew how much I like you just like that._ She could have just screamed, because, yes, she did know! She just wished she didn’t!!

“I like music,” She replied blandly, plopping into the driver’s seat while her legs dangled out of her car. Leaning across the interior of her car, she ejected the cassette from the radio, its final chorus ringing between them.

_“She was one of a kind, she’s just mine all mine, wanted no applause, just another course, made a meal of me and came back for—”_

“Doesn’t everyone like music?” Hargrove asked as he placed his forearm against the top of the open door.

Mandy shrugged coldly, “I guess so, huh? Maybe ‘cause I’m like most other people. Funny, right?”

Billy merely cocked his head down at her, before spying one of the other cassettes on the floorboards of her car, and leaned forwards to snatch it from under her legs. Mandy ignored him in favor of reaching behind her and pulling out her school bags from the cramped backseat. He made a noise as he looked over the little piece of technology.

“Is this a mixtape?” He asked as he peered down at the little strip of tape with her writing on it, “You make your own mixes?”

That caught Mandy’s attention, and she looked up from what she was doing to peer up at what he held in his hands. When she couldn’t see the writing on it, and he wasn’t showing it to her, she grabbed one of his wrists and tugged down his hands and the item they held so she could see it better. On the tape her simple writing read in purple ink: _”Little Purple, Lotta Chaka.”_

She smiled at her own writing, before releasing Hargrove’s limb as she replied, “Yeah, that has Prince and Chaka Khan on it mostly.”

Hargrove’s face screwed up at her music choices, and she smirked up at him, inquiring, “What, you don’t like it?”

“Not my taste,” He shrugged, but pocketed the tape anyway, and Mandy gasped as she watched him do it. He grinned at her reaction, chuckling.

“Chaka Khan is iconic, and you’re so fucking tacky, honestly,” Mandy insulted, looking to him with furrowed brows as she sang, “ _‘Had you effortlessly, that’s the way it was, happened so naturally, did not know it was love’_ —you’re gonna try and say that’s not to your taste? That’s everyone’s taste! You are inhuman if you even try to say it doesn’t get you in the mood! Like, it’s the shit!”

Billy merely rolled his eyes at her, smiling still, “How’s your lip?”

“I think I just might survive,” Mandy replied with feigned seriousness, not missing a beat, “It was looking like a close one for a second, but I’m good now.”

Billy shook his head at her as she went back to shuffling through her belongings, and Mandy just wished he would fuck off already. His presence alone was grating, and pissed her off beyond any reason. Her patience was so frayed with him, that he didn’t even have to do anything but exist to get her blood boiling. She just constantly felt like he was up to something, even if she could see in his rotten little brain and know he was literally just trying to talk to her. Even them speaking felt unsettling to her. 

“So, does fighting with people get you off, or what?” He finally asked the question he had been holding onto the whole time they spoke, and Mandy huffed, yanking her keys out of her car and standing up. She stumbled and plopped back down into her seat to avoid pressing herself against the line of Hargrove’s body as he leaned over her, refusing to move and give her enough space to stand. He smirked down at her once he realized he had effectively boxed her in, and had an advantage over her. Mandy scowled up at him in reply. Asshole. He had no business looking so fucking cocky when he didn’t even know he had one-upped her until the same moment she figured it out. 

“Can you move?” Mandy spat out rudely.

“I don’t know,” Hargrove shrugged, cocking his head and shifting on his feet, “I guess that depends on if you’re gonna answer me.”

“Are you making this a hostage situation, Hargrove?” Mandy drawled, looking up at him tauntingly, “That might not end well for you, my friend.”

“Oh, so you weren’t planning on answering then?” Billy clarified, looking not even slightly surprised by his own deductions. Even in his head, he had already assumed she was planning to bolt at any moment. How disappointing, Mandy thought, that he was already wizening to all her evasive maneuvers. Smart little shit. Mandy gave him a dead-pan stare.

“Why do you even care? You’ve already cast your judgement, right? You’ve already come to your own conclusions about what I’m like, so why even bother asking me a question like that?” Mandy questioned, looking to him with vague confusion.

“Well, I guess I’m curious, Queenie. This fucking town ain’t got shit goin’ on, except for every place you pop up. It’s really got me thinking. Are you just bored? Or do people really piss you off that much?” Mandy gaped at him as he spoke, unable to even believe what he was saying to her. The audacity!

“I’m the victim here, so don’t even try to paint me as some—some—“ Mandy choked for words as she gesticulated wildly, “Some—ugh! I don’t even know! Some kind of bored bitch who needs to pick fights to get her jollies! I do not go around picking fights!”

Well, most of the time, Mandy added in her mind, absolutely refusing to say that aloud.

“Radner? Harrington? Morrow? Chapman? That girl the other day? Carol and Tommy if you’re feeling particularly mean on a given day, I guess. Uh, who else? Oh, you’ve also just threatened to kill some middle schooler for no particular reason other than the sun’s fucking shining,” Billy listed off with a vacant expression, pinning her with bright blue eyes. Mandy shrunk a little at every name, looking a little more sheepish, “And that’s just the people I’ve seen, y’know, and I haven’t been here that long. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m not judging. Just curious.”

“It’s cloudy today,” Mandy challenged with raised brows as she crossed her arms and looked pointedly away from him, “And you’re new, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me,” Billy shot back instantaneously, looking the most severe Mandy had ever seen him. She looked at him from the corner of her eye for a moment, before finally sighing and caving. Mandy dropped the snooty look and huffed, turning to look him in the eye.

“Okay, Hargrove,” Mandy stated with grave seriousness, “I’m gonna tell you a secret. Try not to lose your shit, alright?”

Billy rose his brows, shifting his feet as he cocked his head down at her inquisitively. He looked like a Labrador—if the devil ever had a pet Labrador, anyway. 

“Okay, go on,” He nodded quietly, eyes searing themselves into her brain.

“The world is big, Billy-boy,” Mandy began condescendingly, and whatever attentive expression was on his face evaporated at her tone as he leaned back and rolled his eyes, giving a tired sigh, before looking back to her with vague disappointment, “It’s fucking huge, and to everyone else in this shithole, it’s bigger than they can even imagine. This town is small, and every little pissant who grew up here has a mind even smaller. I’m too big for this town—every goddamn part of me—and I rub people the wrong way. They just don’t know what to make of me, I guess. So, I get myself into a little trouble every now and then. It’s not my fault, exactly.”

Billy chuckled at her explanation, repeating the part that seemed to grab his attention, “Rub people the wrong way?”

“I’ve been told I have a bad attitude,” Mandy explained with a flippant shrug, “Make of that what you will.”

Billy raised his brows at her and gave a small sigh, cocking his head as he leaned further into his arm, “I can imagine you’ve probably heard that a lot.”

“What? The bad attitude thing?” Mandy snorted, rolling her eyes, “Yeah, it’s a compliment at this point. Warms my cold, dead heart. You gonna get outta my way now? Or are we gonna continue this little song and dance?”

Billy stepped out of her way, pushing himself off her car and stepping backwards until he was leaning against his own car beside hers. Mandy stood, dusting herself off, and swinging her bag over her shoulder. He watched her with a gaze that nearly burned the back of her head with its intensity, and Mandy had to force herself to calmly go through the motions of slamming her door and locking her car, even though she was antsy with his eyes boring into her. When she was done, she turned on spot and looked at him pointedly.

“Was there anything else? Or were you just planning on staring?” She questioned frostily, and Hargrove smirked in reply.

“Just enjoying the view,” He announced cockily with a gaze that slid down the length of her body before he looked back up to her face, “Don’t mind me.”

“Ugh, you’re truly despicable,” Mandy declared with a curled lip, making him laugh outright in reply. 

“Despicable is a new one,” He grinned wolfishly, and Mandy huffed.

“Get a life,” She retorted with a roll of her eyes as she began to walk off, her boots clacking deafeningly with her every step. She caught flashes of her own back in Hargrove’s mind, his focus remaining on her ass, and she picked up her speed, trying to get out of sight as quickly as possible. 

Mandy stumbled in the middle of one of her long strides as Billy Hargrove called to her retreating form, “How about I get your number first?”

She looked over her shoulder and sent him a middle finger in reply.

* * *

“I hate this,” Mandy muttered as she stripped out of her designer denim and shimmied into her tragic school-mandated gym clothes. Around her the chittering of girls sounded, along with the clamor of lockers.

Mandy and Carol had skipped gym for the entire semester, and now they were going to have to come in and pass a physical examination for a grade. Everyone else was technically going, too, but it was especially upsetting for Mandy, who was too pretty to be expected to actually perform any form of physical exercise. It just wasn’t fair! No one could expect her to sweat in the middle of the school day, and then just, like, go back to class! It was disgusting!!

“It sucks,” Carol agreed as she slipped into her shirt and adjusted the sweat band around her head. Mandy rose her brows as she pulled a scrunchii onto her wrist in case of emergency—a sweaty, hair-destroying (i.e. life ruining) emergency. 

The coach blew a whistle within the locker room, calling, “Alright girls! C’mon! Let’s go! File out!”

Mandy and Carol looked to each other with mirroring looks of dismay, watching as all the other well-behaved girls left. Both waited to see if the coach would leave them to hide in the locker room, before her booming voice barked at them, “C’mon, you two! Quit dragging your goddamn feet and get moving!”

Mandy closed her eyes and wordlessly lamented while Carol hung her head, and both girls marched out. 

As it was raining, they were led into the gymnasium, which was already filled with sweaty boys. Mandy was ready to shout. As if being bossed around like a circus act wasn’t enough, now she had to suffer through physical torture and the smell of sweaty teenage scumbags! Mandy was already trying to find an angle to get herself out of this as she squinted into space distractedly.

“Oh, hey, Tommy!” Carol shouted from beside her, jolting her out of her plotting, and Mandy looked up to see Tommy passing a basketball, before turning and waving in their direction. 

“Hey, Babe!” He grinned.

“You two disgust me,” Mandy announced dryly.

“Jealous?” Carol sang, shaking her butt a little, “Just ‘cause you’re frigid?”

“I’m frigid, because shit like relationships disgust me, you dumb idiot,” Mandy replied with an unimpressed look, “The human need for connection is gross. The fact you let him put his dirty dick in you is fucking gross!”

“Jesus, Mandy,” Carol laughed, “If I didn’t think you were crazy before, I definitely do now!”

Mandy shrugged, “I probably could have left out the last part.”

Her response had Carol laughing even harder at her.

“I’m being serious, don’t laugh,” Just as Mandy said it, Carol flew into another fit of giggles, and Mandy sighed in response, “I don’t know why I bother with you.”

“Alright, Boys! Quit your gawking, and get back to practice,” The boys basketball coach shouted, and all the boys slowly went back to tossing the ball between one another with little interest, as they were too busy eyeing all the scantily clad girls with their short-shorts and tube socks. Mandy grimaced, trying to block her mind from all the images she was getting. Honestly, the boys were looking at them like they had never even seen girls before, “The other half of the gym is all yours ladies.”

A whole half of the gym to suffer in, just fucking dandy.

“You heard Coach McCall!” The girl’s coach clapped her hands, “Now it’s time for some laps, girls!”

Mandy looked to Carol with clear distress in her gaze, both girls groaning in sync, “Laps?”

“Fuck that, I’m not running,” Carol announced, cocking her hip, “I’m walking it, ‘cause there is no way I’m about to sweat out my curls.”

Mandy shrugged, watching as some of the more athletic girls took off running, “Not to be dramatic or whatever, but I’d rather be dead than here right now.”

Carol smirked as they began strolling around the court, “Same.”

“Mueller! No lallygagging! I wanna see you sweat!” Mandy turned to her head to look to her coach, looking past a huge group of girls who were walking behind her. When Mandy and the coach locked gazes, she continued, “Yeah, you! Now get that ass in gear!”

Mandy gaped, “What? Me?”

“You heard me! Move it!” She barked in reply, and Mandy turned to Carol with a look of disbelief. 

“See you around, Mandy,” Carol waved mockingly as Mandy turned forward to begin jogging, her head mostly turned to hatefully eye her teacher. She hadn’t even spoken to the woman before, and now she was being singled out. It was such bullshit!

“C’mon, Mueller!” Tommy shouted as she jogged passed the boys’ half of the gym, “Push it to the limit!”

Mandy flipped him the bird as she sped up, needing to get the hell away from the half of the gym that she knew would be more than willing to tear her apart. Ugh, boys. 

“Eyes on the prize, Mueller!” Another joined in, and Mandy shook her head as she glanced in the direction of the voice to catch Billy Hargrove begin clapping at her as she rounded the court faster than before.

“Whoo, Queenie! Let me see that ass work!” He whistled as she passed him, and Mandy spun on her heel and broke off from her designated route, opting to rush him instead. He turned tail immediately as she closed in on him, wheezing out a gleeful cackle as she swatted at the only part of him within her reach—his ass, “Ooh, I told you I’d have her chasing me!”

All the other boys couldn’t resist jeering at her expense, and she stuck her foot out recklessly, trying to snag his ankle and ground Billy fucking Hargrove and his big mouth for good. Billy hopped over her foot, dancing around to face her, arms spread mockingly, “If you want it, come and get it, Queenie.”

“You gotta big mouth,” Mandy sneered as they continued to circle each other with locked gazes, “I think I’m gonna shove your own fucking foot in it, Hargrove!”

“Well, you know what they say about guys with big feet,” Billy called loftily, looking smug and too fucking cool as he shrugged a single bare shoulder at her.

“Oh, about the fact that they have exactly five more minutes to live before I fucking kill them? Yeah, I have heard that, actually,” Mandy feigned seriousness, taking two quick steps closer to him that had him backing up three. Dumb asshole. She frowned and he grinned in reply, eyes alight with mirth. His mind was a messy tangle of exhilaration and buoyant playfulness, and that in combination with the fact that he had so quickly gotten her attention had his entire being singing for her. He was already in a good mood, and then she walked in the room, looking too enticing for him to ever dream of leaving alone. Ugh, this was going to suck for her, Mandy already knew.

“C’mon,” He whispered in her direction as they pranced around each other in a wishy-washy, tug-and-pull motion that had them dancing back and forth, but always staying around the same area. It was beginning to eat away at Mandy’s pride that she kept getting herded into the same damn spot. Hargrove and his fucking animal instinct was winning out at the moment, and she hated it! She could see into people’s heads, he shouldn’t have been able to play her like this! 

“You’re an infuriating asshole, you know that?” Mandy panted out from a combination of both being furious and out of shape. Billy chuckled at her, his entire face lighting up.

“Are you seriously breathing that heavy?! You ran all of two steps!” He crowed, grinning at her with a look that was both sympathizing and mocking. 

“Are you calling me fat?” Mandy hissed, before sarcastically taunting as she tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder, “Careful, Hargrove, you may just end up charming the pants right off a girl talking like that.”

He merely laughed at her, seeming too amused by the fact she was trying to act cool despite struggling for breath, “You really are crazy, I love it.”

“Ugh, you’re so desperate,” Mandy stuck her tongue out derisively, “I think I might vomit.”

“Because you’re sick from the unusual amount of exercise? Or just in general from the lack of oxygen?” Billy inquired sardonically, a smug look on his face at his burn. Mandy gave a mocking little ‘har, har’ in reply, prepping herself for a good retort, when a voice interrupted their little smack-talk session.

“Mueller! Get off the damn court, you little shit!” Mandy jumped as the boys’ basketball coach shouted her name, and sprung away from Hargrove with wide-eyes. Billy laughed, tossing his head back as he roared with laughter at her expression.

“But he was—!” She shouted to defend herself, pointing an accusing finger in Hargrove’s direction.

“Get off my damn court!” The coach yelled over her explanation, “Or I’m giving you time!”

“ _Time?!_ As in detention!?!” Mandy whined, stomping her foot before growling out, “ _Ruuurggh!_ I hate this stupid school!!”

Just as she turned to obey the coach’s orders, a firm smack was given to her right ass cheek, and she spun on spot to sending a cracking slap into Billy Hargrove’s bare chest. He yowled, his laughter abruptly ending as she spun back around and continued her way back to the outside of the court with a sway in her hips. 

“Oh, shit!” She heard him hiss to another boy, “Look at that! She left a fucking welt!”

Mandy turned to look at her handiwork, spotted the perfect red handprint she left in the middle of his chest, and smiled daintily in his direction as he frowned at her.

“Hey, that hurt!” He called to her as she trotted off prissily, “Come back here and apologize, Bitch!”

“That was my intention!” Mandy yelled back, waving like a debutante, “And never! See ya in hell, Asshole!”

“Don’t goddamn wave at me like you’re not gonna be right back around the court, Idiot!” Billy full on shouted, and Mandy’s smile fell off her face. Shit! That was right! She had to go around the court more than once! Billy rose his brows at her suddenly sullen expression as he yelled accusingly in her direction, “You didn’t think of that, did you?!”

“Shut up! I’m busy!” Mandy shouted as she took to jogging again, looking at her coach as she passed, pausing to whine out pitifully, “The boys are bothering me, Coach Sandy! Can you make them stop?!”

“What lap are you on?” She asked, looking up from a notebook, and Mandy widened her eyes in a way that she hoped looked innocent as she lied.

“My third,” Mandy smiled, and her coach looked vaguely irritated.

“You stop at sixteen,” She announced dully, “Keep going, just ignore the boys.”

Ugh! So unhelpful! Mandy turned on her heel and marched off in a huff, getting all of three steps before her coach was yelling at her back, “And run this time, Mueller! I mean it!!”

Everyone was against her, and it sucked balls. So she ran laps, feeling like a pile of shit the entire time, and sometimes feeling worse when Billy Hargrove ran backwards alongside her on the inside of the court to mock and annoy her with minimal struggle. She would scream it from the rooftops if able: Boys were the worst, and Billy Hargrove was one of the worst boys she had ever encountered.

Mandy made pace with a girl on the soccer team who had the biggest thighs on earth and who she was sure could crush a skull between them. She really didn’t know her name, but the girl definitely knew hers as Mandy matched her stride, breathing hard, “Hey, Mandy! How ya holding up?” 

Mandy grimaced in reply, “Ugh, _Honey_ —I think I’ll die if I run any more.”

Somewhere behind her, disembodied laughter rang out. Fucking Hargrove, that athletic piece of shit. 

“So you know Billy Hargrove, right? He’s pretty cool!” The girl announced cheerily, and Mandy turned to give her the most evil look she could manage in the moment—although, she was nearly positive she just looked like a frustrated, sweaty baby. The girl didn’t even blink, and Mandy scoffed in reply.

“No,” Was all she gritted out, before she increased her pace, elongating her stride and trying to push through the unpleasant burning in her lungs as she out-sprinted the girl beside her in order to avoid talking about Billy Hargrove any longer. The girl tried to keep up, but ultimately fell behind and Mandy made two more laps with the soccer player twenty feet behind her the whole time. She ran so fast that even Hargrove was surprised to see her back around the court so soon, and turned his head mid-play, only to catch a ball in his chest in his distraction and get yelled at by another guy.

“You gonna make eyes at Mueller all day or play the goddamn game, Hargrove?” The faceless boy asked, and Mandy would have laughed maniacally if she was not already struggling for every breath. 

By the time she was back around the court, she was losing steam and ready to take a nap, and all the boys were crowded around someone on the ground. Mandy tried to peek at who it was as she passed, but caught Steve Harrington’s gaze instead, and the boy simply raised his brows in question at her. 

“What?” She panted as she slowed near him, “What’s with the look, Harrington?”

“So,” He began, walking along the inside of the court with her, “You and Billy Hargrove, huh?”

Mandy managed a breathless laugh at that, “Me and Billy Hargrove what, exactly?”

Steve shrugged, looking only slightly guileless, “Well, y’know.”

“Uh, I don’t! And if I did, you better not be insinuating what I think you are!” Mandy stopped jogging to turn her attention fully on Steve, stabbing a single index finger into his sweaty collarbone.

“Look, I get it, all the girls like him—he kinda looks like Rob Lowe, and he’s got the whole bad boy thing going for him with the hair and the cigarettes,” Steve explained, waving his arms around lazily as he spoke, and Mandy made a disgusted choking sound in wordless reply, “But I need you to be careful around him. He’s off, Mandy.”

Mandy blinked, looking to Steve as she struggled to even out her breathing, before nodding, “Yeah, I see it, Steve. I appreciate the warning and everything, but—I mean, c’mon. There is nothing going on. He’s gross. Just look at him.”

Mandy raised a single open palm in Hargrove’s direction for emphasis. Billy stood a few yards away, standing next to Tommy and raising his arm to swipe sweat off his brow, nodding at something the other boy was saying. A bead of sweat dripped between his pectoral muscles, straight down the center cut of his abs, before rolling to a stop right above his belly button, and Mandy’s eye twitched in response. She could feel her blood pressure rising by the second. Everything about Billy Hargrove was going to fucking kill her! The one time he should have definitely been disgusting, he just had to manage some fucking sex appeal! It was bullshit, and Mandy was angry about it! He was inhuman!

Steve rose his brows, looking to her as if even he couldn’t really find what was so unappealing, “Uh, right. Gross.”

“He is, Steve! He’s a total pig, and he’s totally obsessed with me! It’s gross! He is _so gross!!_ ” Mandy shouted up into Harrington’s face, pointing at his face with with all the tenacity she had in her, “So don’t even try it with me! Do not even think whatever dumb thought you are thinking in your big, dumb head! It’s never going to happen. Ever. I will die first, Steve! Read my fucking lips if you can’t hear me: _I will die before that happens!_ And y’know, what?! This whole conversation is pissing me off, so I’m leaving!”

“What doesn’t piss you off anymore?” Steve asked with spread arms as Mandy turned on her heel and resumed her torture, “Seriously, Mueller! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you happy!”

“Obviously! How could I ever be happy in your presence?” Mandy yelled back without facing Steve and resumed jogging, deciding she was going to be done after one last lap. She didn’t care if she had to lie, she was not running another lap passed these idiots!

When Mandy set her pace, the soccer player had met up with her again, and another smiling girl fell into step with them. She just couldn’t suffer in silence, could she? People always wanted to accost her when she was at her most vulnerable.

“Hey, Mandy!” The other girl chirped from beside her, and the soccer player pointed to the short, blonde, new addition.

“She’s Kim,” The soccer player introduced, “I don’t know if you guys have ever met before—“

“We have!” Kim chimed in perkily, “We used to have geometry together!”

Oh, no. Mandy didn’t know if she could handle so much positive energy at one of the darkest points in her life. It was highly likely she might die from it, honestly. Inwardly, Mandy Mueller was a sweaty, sobbing mess, and outwardly, she was only sweaty—but still, the sobbing part of her kind of felt like escaping at any moment. Like, maybe, tears could just spring from her eyes and she could drop to the floor, wailing pitifully the whole time. 

Oh! That was an idea! Mandy contemplated about the likelihood of escaping this torture through feigning injury as she rounded the court, and a brilliantly wicked grin lit her features. She could claim she had a cramp! Act like she rolled her ankle! The ankle idea was a very strong contender. Mandy was almost positive that would work, and the sky felt like it opened up and casted a heavenly light upon her in that moment.

Until the curtains of reality slammed shut on her and Billy Hargrove’s voice called, “Hey, Queenie, wanna see a magic trick?”

Mandy bumbled to a near stop, smile falling off her face and storm clouds rolling right into her headspace. The girls beside her slowed to her pace, eyes wide and brows raised as they smiled in Hargrove’s direction as he looked pointedly at Mandy. Ugh, she should have remembered to plot earlier, and avoided this situation in it’s entirety. She wouldn’t be making that mistake again.

Billy Hargrove stood, spinning the basketball on a single finger as he waited to have her full attention, and when she dully rolled her eyes in his direction, he bounced the ball with a grin—once, twice, left, and then right. He went into a crossover dribble with ease, crossing the ball between his legs as he completely ignored the boy defending in front of him, and Mandy’s eyes were ready to roll into the back of her head and never come back. He moved around the boy too easy, his foot work even faster than his hands, running in a full circle around the boy outside the key, before shooting a three pointer that didn’t even bank off the backboard before swishing right into the net. He looked back to her while licking his lower lip, before biting it with a grin at the dumb look on her flushed face.

Ugh! The girls around her all clapped for him, and she looked around both bewilderment and betrayal. _Um, hello?!_ There were not this many girls with her when she was running! What the fuck was going on here?! Mandy was in disbelief!

“What were you saying, again?” Harrington passed her with his hands on his hips and a look of supreme irritation on his face that she felt in her very soul, “Nothing happening, huh?”

“Oh, shut up, Steve.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys....... mandy............. and max...... INTERACTED!!! lol and mandy didn't even know she was talking to an actual ginger ICON can you believe it??? lmao and it was also kinda anticlimactic lol i'm so sorry!!! it will be a few more chapters before you see anything come from their interactions, but the build up will probably be worth it??? or maybe not lol we'll wait and see i guess..... >____>


	9. Play That Funky Music

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, so lol this chapter hasn't been edited the way the others have b/c I've been distracted this week, but I really wanted to stay on schedule (bfrdbcdjbckjdsbcs FUCKING SCHEDULES THO ugh they are the bane of my existence tbh i'm a flake lol) 
> 
> anyway, THIS CHAPTER - more annoying teenagers. and new characters. and maybe a little surprise none of you guys were expecting??? also, a sneaky little plot easter egg none of you are going to think I could make into a huge plot point... but I'm going to b/c I'm a big loser??? lmao anyway, enjoy, Sweeties! <3

“Carol! Where the fuck did you go last afternoon?! I had to run laps by myself!” Mandy Mueller’s disembodied voice shrieked in the distance, and Tommy and Carol jerked apart from one another, Tommy nearly stumbling over the bannister on the staircase they were currently occupying. Billy Hargrove rose his brows at their twin looks of panic, the girl beside him giggling from under his wing as he blew out a plume of smoke in her direction and grinned down at her.

The top of Mandy’s blonde head appeared from the first floor, her hateful, diamond eyes being the only visible part of her from her position below them.

“I knew I’d find you here, Whore!” Mandy yelled haughtily, her little pointer finger sticking between the rails to point up at Carol, “Get some new tricks, Losers!”

“Oh, whatever, Virgin!” Carol snipped back in reply, heavy foot stomping in the spot her finger last occupied, and Mandy’s face disappeared, her footsteps echoing in the hall.

“I’m kicking your ass now for desertion, Caroline!” Mandy shouted as she appeared bodily at the bottom of the staircase, arms spread to hold each side of the bannister, “And then I’m gonna kick your ass later for calling me a virgin!”

“You’re not gonna do shit!” Carol sneered.

“Oh, yeah?!” Mandy goaded, “I’m not!?”

“That’s right! You’re not!” Carol shouted back with equal mocking.

“Bet money, Bitch! I want some gas money after I kick your ass to kingdom fucking come!” Mandy hadn’t even finished her statement before she was thundering up the staircase, and Billy and his new little buddy had to squish their legs to their chests from their position sprawled across the steps to avoid being trampled by Mandy Mueller’s heeled boots. 

“Mandy!” Carol shouted distressingly as Mandy closed the gap between them, before promptly hauling ass up the winding staircase and out of sight, her disembodied voice announcing indignantly, “I can’t even run in these shoes, you bitch!”

“Good, make my life easier for once!” Mandy screamed maniacally in response as she hopped up the stairs after her friend.

Both girls’ footsteps thundered down the halls as they disappeared from sight, and Tommy sighed with relief once their shouting became distant, unintelligible squawking.

“Phew, that was close one,” Tommy looked to the duo lounging on the stoop, “I thought I was gonna get dragged into Mueller’s bullshit again.”

Billy rose a single brow in response.

* * *

“Carol! You’re so selfish!” Mandy shouted, waving a single arm around as they walked between classes, “What’d I say? I said, ‘if you’re going, then I’ll go’! And you said you were gonna do it!”

Carol threw her hands up, “God, quit complaining about it already! I said I was gonna go! Not that I was gonna run with you! There’s a difference, open your fucking ears, Mueller!”

“If you were having sex—“ Mandy began, pointing a foreboding finger in Carol’s direction, “May God have fucking mercy on you, Bitch, because I will not.”

“We were just making out in the custodian’s closet! Like give me a break! I have a life outside of you, y’know?” Carol exclaimed, “This is such bullshit, Mandy! I can’t believe you’re yelling at me over this!”

“Yeah! But your life outside of me should come second, obviously, Dumbass!” Mandy exclaimed with equal vigor, not even joking, “I’m important! I’m a big deal! My suffering is paramount! You can’t put Tommy and his shrimp dick before me! It’s heresy!”

Carol gaped at her, letting out a snort of laughter, “You’re so annoying, Mueller! I can’t believe we’re even friends!”

“I know!” Mandy agreed wholly, nodding along, “I’ve been trying to get rid of you for so long!”

“God, you’re such a bitch!” Carol declared, laughing even harder.

Mandy continued to nod, before shrugging helplessly as she walked up to her locker, “I know!”

Carol shook her head in reply, rolling her eyes, “I don’t know why I bother.”

Finally, Mandy sighed, turning her lock, “Me either, honestly. I’m terrible. You should have seen how disgusting I was after class. I went back to the locker room and looked like I survived the end of the world. I’m transferring out, I refuse to do that again.”

“Damn,” Carol cursed, leaning against the wall as Mandy pulled off the lock, “Wish I could have seen that.”

Mandy sent her an unamused glance that had Carol smirking as she popped her gum. Swinging open her locker door, Mandy rolled her eyes at her friend’s expression, completely failing to catch the little piece of plastic that clattered to the floor from her metal cubby. Carol rose her brows as Mandy stepped back, eyes landing on a cassette that laid innocently at her feet. 

“You dropped that,” Carol announced drolly, smacking her gum and pointing to the ground at her feet.

“Thanks,” Mandy replied sardonically, bending over to pick up the little tape with trepidation, already guessing who it was from. She turned it over, looking for the little white tape and her writing in purple ink, but instead came upon ten digits in thick black marker and nothing more. Mandy rose her brows, turning the tape over once, twice, and a third time, before she looked to Carol with confusion, “This isn’t even mine.”

“Well, it came from your locker,” Carol insisted, waving her arm lazily at Mandy’s locker, “I saw it with my own eyes.”

Mandy sighed tiredly before she exploded, “I know that! I was here, Carol! I meant that someone else put it in there! I swear, you are so fucking obtuse sometimes!”

“Don’t use your hoity-toity, big-girl words on me, Mandy!” Carol called back, voice laced with offense, “God! You’re so stuck up, ugh!”

Mandy rolled her eyes, stepping towards Carol and pointing down at the numbers on the cassette, “Shut up, and look at this. Does this look familiar to you?”

Carol gasped, recognition clear on her features, “Oh, my God! That’s a phone number! Ooh, I wonder what’s on the tape!”

Mandy groaned, tossing her head back with exasperation, “No! I meant for you to tell me if you recognized the number, Carol!”

“Oh, no,” Carol waved off the question, one hand reaching out for the little rectangle in Mandy’s grasp, “How the hell should I know? Hey, you want me to ask around for you?”

“No! You better not!” Mandy shouted, clutching the cassette to her chest defensively, before stuffing it into her jacket pocket, “I’ll just listen to it and think about calling to find out who it is.”

Mandy wasn’t going to do that, though. She was simply going to mind-read every sad sap that even looked in her direction for the rest of the day, and her first victim was going to be Billy fucking Hargrove. Mandy was nearly positive he was behind this. Probably a new ruse to get her attention. Annoying asshole.

Maybe, if it was from Hargrove, she wouldn’t even play it. The thought of finding out what was on the tape made her nauseous with anxiety. She hated the unpredictable nature of Billy Hargrove with the very core of her being.

“Ooh, sweet lil Mandy-Pandy’s got herself a secret admirer, and she’s embarrassed! Ain’t that just too cute!?” Carol shrieked at the top of her lungs, and Mandy smacked her firmly on the ass in reply, making her shriek even louder with laughter.

“Shut the fuck up already, you absolute cow!” Mandy yelled in reply, whacking Carol again on the ass, harder and with intention to bruise, and Carol yelped, jumped, and continued howling with laughter.

“You _are_ embarrassed! Oh, my G—“ Carol was in the middle of shouting, when Mandy swatted her again, harder still, making her screech, “ _Aaaouch!!_ Mandy, you bitch!”

“Hey, Mandy, hands off the merchandise,” A voice called dully from behind her as Mandy was in the middle of grappling with Carol and smacking her ass repeatedly with varying degrees of strength. When she grunted in reply, and continued whacking Carol, a hand came down on her own exposed ass, and she kicked out unthinkingly with a heel, connecting with something just barely, “Jesus, Mueller, you kick like a mule!”

When she recognized the voice as Tommy’s, Mandy let go of Carol, shoving her away without ceremony before shaking out her head and tossing one side of her hair away from her face.

“Kiss my ass, Tommy,” Mandy announced, sticking her nose in the air, before grabbing her things from the ground and slamming her locker shut, shoving her lock on it with minimal attention.

“Hey, Mandy!” A girl chimed from behind Tommy, and Mandy peeked around him to spy the soccer player’s friend standing next to an expressionless Billy Hargrove.

“Uh, hey, Cam, right?” Mandy smiled.

“Kim, actually,” Kim corrected.

Mandy gave a smile that was too much of a grimace to actually look pleased to see her, “Right, where’s my head at today?! Ha!”

Kim laughed along with her, and Mandy paused mid feigned laughter to shoot Hargrove a very unimpressed look, making him smirk at her briefly, before looking further down the hall and breaking eye contact. 

“What were you two kitty cats hissing over before I got here?” Tommy questioned goonishly, looking like a cartoon villain. 

Mandy swore her ass was sweating from the amount of duress she was under in the current social climate. She did not need Tommy and Carol bringing up some secret tape in front of Billy Hargrove of all people. First off, it would have been horrifying, given she assumed it was from him anyway, and second, it drew attention to the fact that she gave a shit! And Mandy refused to be ousted for giving a shit! Especially by the dynamic dipshits, Tommy and Carol.

Carol appeared then, grinning fiendishly, “Mandy here—“

“Knows all about your stunt in the park!” Mandy shouted belligerently, voice a full octave higher than anything respectable for indoors, “And I am disgusted by the things you two did in that jungle gym, Tommy! I may just call your mother!”

“What?!” Tommy exclaimed, looking to Carol pointedly, and Carol looked to Mandy with a gaping mouth.

“How did you find out about that?!” Carol pointed an accusing finger in Mandy’s direction that had her cringing and scrambling to come up with a good cover-story, because ‘I read your mind’ probably would not be sufficing.

“Uh—” Mandy babbled, “Uhm, well, you see—”

“I can’t believe you tell Mueller shit like that! She’s a total motormouth!” Tommy exclaimed, waving a hand in Mandy’s face for emphasis.

“Ooh, what’d you two do in the jungle gym?” Kim asked, her perky little voice dropping as she look to them eagerly, “I’m dying to know.”

“I didn’t even tell her that! She heard it from somewhere else!” Carol yelled right back, pointing an accusing finger in Mandy’s direction, before she turned her attention to Mandy, “Where’d you hear about that, Big Mouth?!”

“I’m not a motormouth!” Mandy defended, turning her attention to Tommy to avoid answering Carol’s question, and contributing to the amount of noise pollution they were creating with all their shouting. 

“You are, Mueller, now cram it!” Tommy bellowed, nudging her out of the way to remove her from between his and Carol’s forms. Mandy took that as her opportunity to bolt, and was almost home free before Billy Hargrove snagged her elbow.

“Where are you going?” Billy asked with a pointed look.

Mandy rose her brows innocuously, “Uh, class?”

“Ooh, to English? I’ll walk with, Babe!” Kim announced from the other side of Hargrove, and Mandy grinned wickedly in reply.

“She’ll walk with,” Mandy reiterated with a smile on her face, knowing her lie was being backed up by an actually innocent party and therefore nearly impossible to disprove. Billy Hargrove looked to her with a knowing look, his eyes narrowing just fractionally at her. Mandy blinked away the images of a ceiling fan spinning before his eyes as he smoked a cigarette and dreamed about impossible things, Queen playing somewhere nearby. Ugh, there were his memories again. Mandy straightened her back, shaking out her head infinitesimally as she yanked herself out of his grasp, “Okay, bye now!”

Mandy jerked Kim away from Hargrove’s side like she was wrenching a nail loose from a piece of wood, and Kim squeaked as Mandy tugged her along fiercely.

“Yeesh! You’re strong, Mandy!” Kim complained as the girls fled from Hargrove’s presence, and Billy Hargrove twisted on spot to watch their backs until they were out of sight.

* * *

Mandy was positive the tape was from Hargrove, but she still had to call the number and make sure. She picked up her car phone as she stuffed a French fry in her mouth, the cassette settled in her lap. Placing the receiver to her ear, she dialed the number with efficiency, before listening to the line try to connect. It rang and rang, and Mandy was contemplating just hanging up when she finally heard a third ring. Her anxiousness was getting the best of her and making her fidgety. She covered the mouthpiece so no noise would be heard if someone did pick up, stuffing another bite of her lunch into her mouth.

No one did, and the answering machine picked up instead, “Hello, you’ve reached the Har—“

“Hey, Mandy!” A voice shouted, and Mandy screeched, nearly jumping out of her skin as she slammed down the phone in terror, half her lunch flying into in the air. She was going to be finding French fries everywhere for months. Fucking great.

“Fuck! Don’t fucking sneak up on me like that, Cam!” Mandy struggled for breath, putting a single hand to her chest, “I think you gave me a heart attack!”

“It’s Kim, Babe,” Kim corrected for the second time that day, and Mandy hung her head with a sigh.

“Right, yes,” Mandy breathed out, “Sorry. Kim, right, I’ll remember next time.”

“It’s alright,” Kim shrugged, “Sorry for scaring you, anyway. What are you up to out here all by yourself?”

“Enjoying life,” Mandy replied thoughtlessly as she patted herself off, snagging a fry from her lap and sticking it in her mouth distractedly.

“Oh, well, I came over here to invite you to hang with us,” Kim declared, pointing over to the three bodies loitering near the trunk of Hargrove’s ugly beast, “I don’t think anyone should be left out. It’s sad, y’know?”

“Uh, no,” Mandy sunk a little at her words, feeling moody for seemingly no explicable reason, “Thanks for the offer, but I’m good.”

“Oh, okay,” Kim replied, a little of her pep gone, and Mandy didn’t mean to slip into her head, but she did. _He’s just going to stare at her all fucking day, and ignore me! What is the point!? He’s such a player, can’t even give me the time of day when I’m right in front of him! He’s already looking at the next pretty thing! Ugh!_ Kim’s head shouted with a viciousness that Mandy had not expected. Outwardly, she smiled easily, “Maybe next time, Babe.”

“Heh,” Mandy smiled back, “Right, sorry. I just don’t—well, y’know—wanna be around Billy Hargrove. He’s kinda mean to me sometimes.” 

He was also gross, and evil, and a total pervert who was in love with her and her terrible attitude. Ugh, and was also now giving her mysterious cassette tapes with his phone number on it. It was so disgusting and romantic she could just barf.

Kim’s brows rose in response, her expression one of polite discomfort, “Oh, uh, sorry to hear that, Sweetie.”

Inwardly, she was roaring with victory, though, and Mandy wanted to roll her eyes. Kim’s little brain was working into overdrive to suss out the situation—Billy Hargrove was hung up on Mandy Mueller, and Mandy Mueller didn’t want anything to do with him. Now, Kim stood a chance, she reasoned. If Billy had his eyes on Mandy, then he would never move on as long as Ice Queen Mandy Mueller remained frigid—and that was a given. It was convoluted at best, really, but Kim’s mood lightened up exponentially as she thought it over. Also, who would ever bet on Mandy Mueller doing the right thing? Why would anyone ever trust someone like Mandy enough not to take a boy that was already drooling over her? Mandy thought that was a little stupid. Even worse still was who in their right mind would ever want a boy who prioritized them under another girl?! Kim had really poor critical-thinking skills, and Mandy was ultimately worried for the girl’s future.

“Right! Anyway! Good luck with lunch, I’ll just be over here! Don’t worry, I’m fine!” Mandy waved her off boisterously, trying to shut up the girl’s loud little head. 

Kim’s brows rose at her, before she waved in reply, “Alright, Honey! Pop on by if you get lonely.”

Mandy would literally die before that ever happened, and she sunk a little in her seat as she watched Kim strut off. Billy Hargrove attracted crazies, it seemed. Mandy didn’t know if that was good or bad luck for a boy who saw so clearly attracted to mental instability—well, if his bizarre, unnatural attraction to Mandy was anything to go by. Mandy was slowly coming to terms with the fact that although she wasn’t clinically insane (well, probably), she was still a fucking nutcase. She read minds, and jumped from high windows, and got hit by cars, and astral projected, and all of that shit was fucking crazy! There was something so deeply wrong with Billy Hargrove for liking her so much. She was a mess.

His consciousness longed for her in the worst way, and Mandy ducked a little lower in her seat when she realized that he had been eyeballing her from across the parking lot the whole time she was stress-eating over calling his fucking phone number. Mandy was thoroughly put off her meal, and set it into the passenger seat, cleaning herself of the mess she made and tossing her dropped fries out of the window carelessly. She took the cassette and tossed it into the back seat miserably, sighing and leaning back as she slipped her sunglasses over her eyes.

Mandy caught Hargrove peeking over to her car, and raised her arm out of the open window to send him the bird. He merely smiled his sunny little smile. Stupid asshole.

* * *

“He likes you,” Eleven announced unhelpfully as Mandy plopped down onto her plush canopy bed with her walkman in her grasp. Mandy sighed in reply, looking over at Eleven with tired eyes.

“I know,” Mandy groaned, “I just wish he wouldn’t.”

“Why?” Eleven asked, hopping onto the bed with her.

Mandy Mueller survived another day of school, and had rushed home with an anxious edge to her. She had took her stairs two at a time and practically ripped her tight clothes from her body as she changed into a loose pair of pants and an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt so she could vegetate for the rest of the day in comfort. Eleven had appeared somewhere in the middle of that, ready to converse about what had been eating at Mandy all goddamn day.

“Because it’s wrong? Duh?” Mandy looked to her with exasperation, before tossing her hands up and flopping to sprawl across her bed, “You’ve met me, right? You’ve seen inside my head—I’m awful! Shit’s not going well up there!”

“Awful?” Eleven repeated in disbelief, “What is so awful?”

Mandy lifted her head to look at the girl with barely concealed indignation, “Uh? Me! I’m a bitch! I’m mean to everyone, all the time! Billy Hargrove shouldn’t like a girl who is mean to him! You’re not supposed to like people who are mean to you, Honey. If a boy is mean to you, kick his ass to the curb and move on, you get me?”

Eleven blinked at her, “I don’t think you’re awful.”

Mandy made a disconcerted noise, “I suspect you don’t have many friends, truthfully. You’re exposure to the world is minimal at best. I am not a good person, you just don’t have many other options besides me currently.”

“I don’t think you’re awful,” Eleven repeated firmly, and Mandy gave her a combative look to which Eleven insisted, “You’re not awful.”

“I can’t even argue with you right now, I’m that distressed!” Mandy wailed, throwing her head back into the mattress and covering her face with her arms, “You just don’t understand!”

Eleven’s exasperation at her dramatics was palpable to Mandy, and she peeked out from between her limbs to give the girl a purposeful look, “See? Awful! All the time! I can’t turn it off!”

Eleven rolled her eyes, smiling to Mandy in amusement as she shook her head, “Not awful.”

“Yeah, awful,” Mandy insisted, grinning right back as she rolled onto her stomach and patted the space beside her. Eleven crawled up alongside her and laid flat on her belly to her left as they both stretched across the bed horizontally.

Momentarily distracted, Eleven announced, “This is… your bed? It’s big!”

Mandy snorted in reply, “Yep, this is my bed.”

“Pretty,” Eleven complimented with a nod, and Mandy chortled in reply as she shook her head.

“Thanks, Kid,” Mandy laughed outright, “You’re so weird, but I think it’s great.”

“Thanks,” Eleven peered over to her seriously, “You’re good, Mandy, not awful.”

Mandy rolled her eyes, “Thanks, I know you mean it, I just don’t agree.”

Eleven looked at her intensely, and Mandy blinked as she stared into her molten eyes. She saw herself looming over Mitchell Radner, pointing and shouting, all from Mike Wheeler’s perspective. Mandy Mueller never looked more glorious—she wasn’t the princess in the story, she was the knight. She rode in, and slayed the dragon like it was nothing. No one had ever stood up for Mike Wheeler like that before, besides Eleven, and he had been rendered speechless. No one had ever been so righteously angry, so violently capable, and so strong in their stand like Mandy had been in that moment—she stood brave, and noble, and valiant in the face of one his worst nightmares like it was nothing. To Mike Wheeler, she was a hero—not just some mean high school girl who came around to push around some twerps. 

She hadn’t felt like that, though—Mandy had felt like a rabid dog that was being sic’d on some snotty little boy who she wouldn’t have given a shit about otherwise, but Mike Wheeler saw her completely differently, like she was golden, an idol, something truly worthy of his awe. Mandy’s brows furrowed as she stared at Eleven, blinking away the moisture that built up in her eyes.

“Not awful,” Eleven reaffirmed, nodding, “Say it.”

“Not awful,” Mandy nodded, though her mind tacked on a wordless ‘that time’ that Eleven picked up on with a tired shake of her head, “Now what are you really here for this time? Getting cabin fever out in the woods?”

“Your head is…” Eleven trailed off for a moment, eyes darting around Mandy’s flowery room, taking in the silken wallpaper and the large armoire in the corner for a moment before her eyes drifted back to Mandy’s gaze, “Loud. Today.”

“Loud, huh?” Mandy questioned, leaning on her elbows as she looked at Eleven with inquisitiveness. 

“Yes,” Eleven nodded, “I was worried.”

“So, you do check in on me! I knew it!” Mandy exclaimed, pointing a finger at her, “I knew I could feel you sorting through my head! I just knew it!!”

“Sorry,” Eleven looked abashed, and Mandy rose her brows.

“Don’t be. I don’t care,” Mandy shrugged, “Don’t go telling my secrets, though, it’s uncool.”

“Un-cool?” Eleven echoed with painfully apparent confusion.

“To be cool is a positive thing,” Mandy explained easily, shrugging a bare shoulder flippantly, “Like, you can replace it with popular, or nice, or good, get it? To be uncool is the opposite—it’s bad. It’s being mean, or lame, or nasty, or anything bad, I guess.”

Eleven nodded, looking to Mandy intensely as she tried out her new word, “You’re cool.”

“And so are you, Kid. The coolest,” Mandy replied as she fiddled with her walkman in front of her. She popped out her last tape and tossed it aside before moving back to her jacket she had tossed on the ground in her haste to disrobe once she got home. Eleven watched her with silent interest.

“What is that?” Eleven asked as Mandy picked her jacket up off the ground and took the little item that was awakening so much anxiety in her.

“A cassette,” Mandy announced.

“What is that?” Eleven repeated, looking even more intrigued.

“A little thing that plays music,” Eleven’s brows jumped on her face at Mandy’s reply. Mandy hopped back onto the bed and snatched her walkman up. She looked from the tape to the walkman, silently debating what she should do.

“So,” Eleven began, looking impatiently from the walkman to Mandy’s face, “What happens now?”

“Well, you put it in, but…“ Mandy trailed off, looking sheepish as she turned her unsettled gaze onto Eleven’s visage, “I don’t know if I wanna play it.”

“Why?” Eleven inquired, her large doe eyes glittering in the afternoon light.

“Ugh, I don’t know if can put it in!” Mandy tossed her head back and shouted to the canopy above her, “I’m scared of what could be on it! I don’t know how I’ll feel!”

As she was busy lamenting, the tape was ripped out of her hand and flew into the walkman, the walkman shutting on it’s own. Mandy shrieked, hopping from the bed mid-complaint.

“There,” Eleven shrugged, “Now you don’t have to worry anymore. I did it.”

Mandy looked to her bed and the innocuous looking cassette player with a distraught expression, groaning a little to herself as she watched the tape begin whirring and turning. Eleven sat beside it silently, watching Mandy’s anxiety rise as the tape played. Finally, Mandy couldn’t bare not knowing any longer, and dove across the bed to the player, lifting the headphones up to a single ear. Cocking her head, she squinted at the faint sounds, unable to make them out.

“Is it bad?” Eleven asked, looking more anxious than Mandy had ever seen her.

“I don’t know, yet,” Mandy grunted as she turned up the volume, “Shut up for a second.”

“ _She’s a killer queen, gun powder, gelatin, dynamite with a laser beam, guaranteed to blow your mind, anytime,”_ Mandy rolled her eyes, putting a single hand against her temple as her anxiety fled her rapidly, _“Drop of a hat, she’s as willing, as playful as a pussycat—“_

“God, he’s such an idiot! I can’t believe I was ever worried about what was on this thing!” Mandy finally exploded, tossing the headphones back to the mattress as she flopped face forwards onto the blankets.

“Well?” Eleven asked with raised brows, seeming confused by Mandy’s reaction, “Bad… or…?”

“It’s Queen,” Mandy rolled over onto her back, and grabbing the walkman to hold it up for Eleven to lean toward. The side of Eleven’s head hovered over the earpiece, eyes alight with curiosity.

“Queen?” Eleven repeated with confusion, and Mandy placed her head to the earpiece after her to hear the music, only to find Killer Queen was no longer playing. The upbeat song belted out of the little speakers, and Mandy actually found herself smiling as it played.

_“Color me your color, Darling, I know who you are, Come up off your color chart, I know where you’re coming from,”_ Blondie played riotously through the headphones, and Mandy barked out a laugh as the hook played, _“Call me! On the line, Call me, call me anytime—“_

Wasn’t Billy Hargrove such a clever little troll? Killer Queen, and Call me on a tape with his number. Mandy didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or weep. Billy Hargrove knew all the best ways to drive her crazy. There was no fucking way she was ever going to call him. 

“I fucking hate him so much,” Mandy muttered good-humoredly, “Such a tool.”

“Not bad?” Eleven cocked her head inquisitively, and Mandy shook her head.

“Not even half as bad as I thought it was gonna be,” Mandy nodded in reply, tossing the walkman to the side with an easy smile. 

Eleven smiled in reply, bouncing a little in place, “Good!”

Mandy looked to her pointedly, eyes narrowing as she tried to catch the younger girl’s gaze, “Now, what’s up really? Why are you really here? You want something, I can tell.”

Eleven looked to her with a bashful look, her eyes refusing to meet Mandy’s gaze, and Mandy whistled.

“Uh-oh, that bad?” Mandy asked playfully, hoping to ease some of the discomfort Eleven was feeling, “C’mon, nothing can be that bad. Try me.”

“What is…” Eleven glanced up at her, lips pursed, “A dance?”

“Huh?” Mandy’s brows jumped on her face, “A dance? Like a school dance?”

Eleven nodded vigorously in response, “What is it like?” 

Mandy tapped her chin in thought, “Uh, well, it’s like a big party. You know what a party is, right?”

Eleven nodded her head in reply, and Mandy soldiered on with her explanation, “Well, it’s like that, and you can go with someone you like—kinda like a date—or you can go with all your friends. They’re supposed to be fun, I guess. You get to listen to music, and enjoy food and drinks! And the best part is you get to dress up!”

“Dress up?” Eleven parroted cluelessly.

“Yeah, you know, get fancy—style your hair, and wear pretty makeup, and buy an expensive dress!” Mandy waved her arms excitedly, before pausing with a gasp, “Wait, are you going to a dance? Did Mike Wheeler invite you to your first dance, Kid?!”

Eleven smiled bashfully in reply, giggling at Mandy’s wide-eyed expression, and Mandy gasped dramatically yelling, “And you’ve been letting me complain over Hargrove?! What’s wrong with you!?! This is so much more important!”

Eleven shook her head at Mandy’s theatrics, before mumbling out awkwardly, “I don’t… know… What to do.”

“Okay, okay!” Mandy clapped her hands as she shot up from bed, and moved to turn on her stereo across the room, Whitney Houston’s ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ bumping mid-song, and Mandy gave a little shimmy in response before she moved to her vanity and began rummaging through a big box, “Firstly, you will need hair and makeup!”

Mandy pranced to the bed with a handful of items, dumping them with a clatter onto the bedspread, Eleven crawled along the bed around the mess to face Mandy as she stood alongside the mattress. Mandy picked up a barrette and held it aloft, showcasing it theatrically, before she pulled half her hair to the side and clipped it into place.

“This would be so cute for you in pink!” Mandy exclaimed as she gestured to the baby blue plastic in her hair, “Ooh! With pink eyeshadow! Oh, my God! You could devastate, Honey!”

Eleven rose her brows, “Eyeshadow?” 

“Oh, yeah! See?” Mandy grabbed a little plastic compact from the bed and a brush, flipping open the dish and swirling her brush into the powder before sweeping it over her eyelids dramatically and fluttering her eyelashes in Eleven’s direction. Eleven laughed at her and her bright orange eyeshadow, shaking her head.

“Why?” Eleven grinned, looking confused.

“Because it’s fun!” Mandy shouted, before turning her head and modeling her work, “And it makes you colorful! It’s pretty, don’t you think?”

Eleven smiled at her as she nodded, “Mhm, pretty. What else?”

So Mandy showed her all the fun aspects of being a girl. She smudged on eyeliner, and made a show of putting on some lipstick. She danced to Whitney Houston as she pulled clothes out of her over-flowing closet, and tried on different dresses and outfits, showing Eleven all the different fashion for different social occasions. Mandy knew a lot of it was going over the younger girl’s head, but she could see the intense intrigue lingering behind her eyes as she stared up to her. Eleven was trying to absorb as much as she could. She seemed a little overwhelmed by the clothes, and completely awestruck by the colors Mandy painted herself with. 

It was nice to be able to relive the experience of exploring her own femininity, and Mandy found herself laughing as she tossed a feather boa over her shoulders and made a show of wiggling her shoulders in Eleven’s direction. The younger girl’s eyes glittered with mirth and great fixation at every small girly item Mandy showed her. It made Mandy feel like maybe there was actually something exciting in all the things that had become mundane to her. 

There was something so warming about the way Eleven watched her, completely fascinated by every little thing, and it made Mandy beam. She couldn’t ever remember feeling so happy in another person’s presence, and she almost didn’t want their time to end.

It was such a terrifying thing to think about a girl only she could see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY SO!! I have to write this, b/c I hate when writers suddenly stop posting w/ no warning, lol. Like, i'm so dumb i start thinking people died and shit and I don't want to do that to you all so!!
> 
> Updates might start being late. Like, yeah, I've been busy this week, but once my summer starts I will have free reign to be a dumbass with my time, and I'll probably be up all night ruining my sleep schedule while writing (lmao what's new am i right???) but that's not why updates might be late, lol. I've scrapped a lot of the plot I had set up from like chapter 14 and on, b/c of problems with character development that got away from me. Lol, like I sometimes write something I didn't plan to see if I like the way plot winds with it??? and something I ACTUALLY planned didn't really seem to smoothly roll into the plot I have for later in the story so I'm scrapping like four/five chapters I've written out already lol. It has been a painful decision to toss it tbh, but I just didn't like how some relationships were turning out. Example: Eleven and Mandy had a dispute!! A big ole disagreement!!! And it stretched over like three chapters and I'm fucking tossing it into the trash because FUCK IT. It had to go!!! It ruined everything tbh b/c I could not fit it in w/out somehow making Mandy accidentally crush on Jonathan Byers (yes!!! you read that correctly!!!!! he's been in this story for a wHOLE SENTENCE!!! IDEK HOW I DID THIS!!!!!!!!!!). You all think I'm kidding, but I am not. Ch. 20-ish had Mandy sad and lonely without Eleven & Jonathan Byers being nice to her and MANDY BEING SUDDENLY OVERCOME WITH BUDDING CRUSHY-GUSHY EMOTION. Somebody kill me, lmao. >____>
> 
> So!! If you guys want to help me get my shit together, send some fun little plot ideas my way, I'd love to hear them. It would be a great help for me to get writing again after this great tragedy lol. I have a whole plot unwinding before my very eyes, and I'm suddenly feeling VERY VIOLENTLY uninspired. Like, lmao, I totally planned to get back to writing after everything this week, and now I'm scrapping everything and LOL IDK I need help. So, please??? Send my dumb ass some ideas for character interaction??? Like, maybe some prompts? Something you guys would like to see the characters up to?? Who do you want to see more of??? I'll take anything! Ya girl is really desperate for some inspiration tbh I got some holes to fill lol. Maybe something absurd? Sexy?? Angsty??? Idk ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Seriously, feel free to overwhelm me with dumb, cute, cliche, awful, ANY ideas! I would love it! <3 There is literally nothing I cannot run with, believe me - there is NO such thing as a bad idea. I just need to have someone lob an idea at my dumb little brain, and somehow, I will figure it out... >____> Like, seriously! Help me out & I'll love you forever!!! I SWEAR!!! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧


	10. The Girl Who Fell to Earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Look out, Folks, Mandy Mueller's on her bullshit again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOOOOOO i'm a little irked that there isn't more geographical clarification in stranger things tbh lmao like yall are really gonna name a neighborhood _Loch_ Nora and not put it on a lake???? bitch wHAT lol so just imagine loch nora is near a lake okay??? a bunch of lakes. a million lakes. there's a ton of bodies of water around there for the sake of this story lmao
> 
> anyway, i'm on schedule aint that gr8!! and also!! Hopper makes an appearance in this chapter and I just fbdbfhecdbhbdehje gUYS he's my fav character (behind barb and max obv) and I just... love... him............. i can't wait to integrate him more into the storyline tbh b/c he's such a bad bitch lmao he really just does wtfever he has to do to get shit done - no gods, no kings, no prisoners, and no buts about it bitch ncdjkbcdbcjndbdhsbksabdkasbdsak uGH what a legend
> 
> anywho, enough of me being annoying! enjoy, lovelies! <3

Mandy Mueller started a fire. 

Her body had crashed down to earth like a falling star, the dirt around her exploding into the air, and the trees splintering away in charred chunks. She wound up flat on her back, her breaths dragging out of her in burning gasps, and her entire being stinging with the feeling of a million paper cuts all over her. She couldn’t remember how she got there, or even where she was. All she knew was her spine felt like someone was playing it like a xylophone, and that she was feverish, and sweat covered. Spasms rocked her body, an icy burn rolling through her, and she screeched out a long wail of pain. It echoed around her into the all encompassing silence of the night.

The stars were so far away compared to what she remembered, and the world around her was painted in the orange ambience of the fire that surrounded her. Her bones rattled as she quieted herself, her shrieking screams staggering into shuddering sobs as her eyes flooded with tears. She couldn’t move. She didn’t even have the ability to think of moving. Her mind was so far away from her. She couldn’t make sense of anything, but she was sure of one thing: Mandy Mueller fucked up. She had fucked up so bad. She had done something so wrong and so unnatural, she couldn’t even make sense of it.

She was in the middle of suffering through another shudder, gritting her teeth and tossing her head back with a strained sob, when a light flashed in her eyes. She looked into it unflinchingly, tears flooding and running along her face in muddied streaks. Her wide pupils remained unchanged as the light blinded her.

“She’s in shock,” A voice announced gruffly, “Go get a blanket from the truck. Hurry.”

She whimpered, squeezing her eyes shut as her bones rattled under her skin, and barely felt the scratchy blanket enveloping her, or the way she had been scooped up from the ground, the warmth of another body clutching her.

“Chief—“ A voice began, its pitch sounding deafening in her ears, and Mandy felt her whole body jerk in response. Pain seized her, and the vibrating in her grew faster as her muscles clenched in reply.

“Is now the time?! Look at her! She needs a hospital!” Another panic-stricken voice replied, and Mandy found herself jolting and crying out pathetically when sensation began to come back to her. The world was crashing down all around her, all the fragmented feelings and memories coming together in a mosaic that made her head spin at the picture they formed.

Mandy Mueller had done what had been previously impossible. Man could go to the moon, they could build themselves rockets and launch themselves into outer space, but Mandy could do it with just one bad idea. Mandy had teleported herself into fucking outer space, and then back to earth, tearing across the galaxy at warp-speed. 

She remembered leaving her body and floating through the cosmos, seeing all the colors that her human eyes couldn’t—the slight pinks, and off-reds, and not-quite purples all glowing around her. They were beautiful, and her bones called to her, ringing her up like she was a telephone, and somewhere in the back of her mind, Blondie’s ‘Call Me’, was playing irritatingly. She wasn’t going to come back, she had decided then, and that was the exact moment she fucked up.

She became a great explosion—a kaleidoscope that bloomed, and shifted, and became something different entirely as her body tore itself apart, piecing itself together around her like a puzzle. And then she found the space around her less accommodating. The stars seared their shapes into her eyes, their beauty blinding her in the cruelest betrayal, and the weightlessness of space became crushing and choking. Her chest compressed, and wouldn’t expand again, and she realized she was dying—struggling for breath as the bleakness around her sucked out everything she had. The cold ate away at her, sinking into her very bones and cutting into her skin, and she couldn’t even scream against the pain. She tried to no avail, because her lungs wouldn’t work. She couldn’t get air, and her head shrieked in reply, feeling like a ballon that was going to pop at any second. 

It was in her last moments of consciousness, when her eyes barely blinked and her fight began to leave her, that she got another idea. She thought of Eleven, of the woods, and how she might have known what to do. And then Mandy was gone again—all her parts vibrating and feeling like a coke that had been shook up and popped open. She had fizzled out of her bottle again, spilling all the way back down to earth. 

“Are you okay? Hey, can you talk to me?” A hand petted her matted hair back from her face, and she cried out at the contact. She was still sore, her cranium still pounding with the pain of what she just experienced, and she found herself whimpering as she writhed on whatever she had been laid on, curling into herself and grabbing at her head to protect it. A sigh sounded from above her, before the same voice announced, “I’m taking her to the hospital. Tape off the area while I’m gone.”

“Uh, sure, Chief,” A faceless voice answered awkwardly, “But, uh, which area? The destroyed one, or the soon-to-be destroyed one?”

“Where we found her,” The first voice replied tiredly, “I’ll radio in for some support while I’m out. We’ll need to have the fire department out here to prevent it from spreading.”

“Do you think it was a bomb? _A nuke?!_ Russia sending a message? Y’think she might be a Russian spy? Are we going to war, y’think?” Someone asked, their voice grating on her ears, and Mandy groaned, squeezing her eyes shut against the sound. A despairing huff met her ears, before a reply came.

“I don’t know. After the government admitted to being responsible for that Holland girl’s death, who the hell knows what’s going on around here anymore?” The gruff voice replied, rumbling through her bones with its gravelly tone.

“Well, I know one thing for sure,” Another voice cut in, “If she is a spy, she’s a damn good-looking one. Must be really good at her job, did you see her—ow! What?!”

“She can’t be that good at her job, Dumbass. She got herself caught in a goddamn communist terrorist plot!” Another voice bit out jarringly.

“Alright, Idiots, just tape off the area and look around for anything out of the ordinary,” The first voice commanded, and Mandy felt movement around her as another blanket was draped over her shivering form. She shuddered, wailing pathetically and gritting her teeth as she curled further in on herself. Her insides were burning as her blood boiled and surged through her, and her bones were still feeling the aching chill of outer space. Everything she felt was both comfortingly familiar, and also so horrifyingly alien that she just wanted to cry. So she did, her tears leaving her eyes in warm floods, and her sobs tearing out of her throat in raw, warbling babbling. 

“Hey, you’re alright now,” The voice tried to placate, “We’re getting you help.”

She cried harder, shaking now, because that sounded even fucking worse. If they took her to a hospital, she was fucked. She wouldn’t ever escape it. They’d stick her in a bed, and would lock the door on their way out, and she would be trapped forever. 

The engine to the car started, and Mandy fisted her hair in her hands. She couldn’t let them take her, but she forgot how her body worked. She couldn’t find her fight. It reminded her of the moment she was suspended over Amy Radner’s car, numb to everything and also being assaulted by so many sensations at once.

Her sobs became weak, wet laughter when she remembered that. Amy Radner spewing blood out of her mouth with a lisp, and Amy Radner’s red face as Mandy slapped the shit out of her—and then the way Billy Hargrove framed the ugly picture of her kicking Amy Radner’s ass in his awful fucking mind, relishing the grin on her lips and the sound of Amy Radner’s skull breaking a car window. Mandy remembered that being a really good sound, actually. Her shudders rocked through her, and she was crying and laughing all at once, her whole body feeling like a bubble ready to pop.

“Hey, what are you doing back there?! _Hey!!_ ” A voice bellowed, and Mandy only vibrated, giggling as the effervescent energy inside her drew to a crescendo, her spine bowed back as she tossed her head back and cackled. The voice became more panicked, and Mandy knew the man must have been terrified, “Knock it off!!”

Mandy opened her eyes, catching the gaze of the man in the front seat of the suv and distantly recalling seeing him that night Eleven showed her how to astral project. She blinked at him briefly, before she spotted the badge on his shirt, and her bones were back to rattling. Mandy grinned manically, teeth bared in a smile that more resembled a tiger than anything even remotely friendly. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, only blood-shot white showing as she smiled, her mind taking off without her. Her body was running hot, her heartbeat turning thunderous inside her as her consciousness shredded itself apart. She hadn’t ever felt such a searing heat or heard a sound so painfully loud.

When the man shouted in distress, tires squealing as he braked without warning, Mandy just barely caught his last words to her, “Shit, she’s seizing!! Hey, hey! Stay with me, Blondie!!”

That wasn’t going to happen, Mandy thought to herself, just as she exploded into a great blinding starburst of colors.

When Mandy reappeared, she dropped down like a strike of lightning, crashing into a body of water with a discombobulating splash. She opened her eyes and blinked into inky world around her. Her hair floated against her face, and she distantly realized that she was underwater. She startled, choking just slightly, but managed to push the water that had entered her mouth right back out, some bubbles escaping her lips. In any other situation, it would have been alarming, but Mandy had just survived the vacuum of space, and drowning in water seemed like a kindness in comparison. She allowed herself to become buoyant, allowing her body to begin to float toward the surface, before she began kicking, breaking the surface of the water and taking a long gulp of air, and then releasing a weak, quaking laugh. Her throat was raw and her eyes burned and her body ached all over, but she was alive, amazingly.

Her breath puffed into the air, blowing little white plumes of condensation as she gasped, and she remembered it was nearly winter already, even though her whole body was warm all over now. Compared to the unforgiving vastness of space, winter in Hawkins, Indiana felt like a tropical fucking vacation, and Mandy sighed as her body settled, her bones creaking to a standstill and her blood simmering lowly in her veins. She vaguely realized she was in Lovers Lake, and it was probably only a twenty minute walk to her home through the woods. She couldn’t believe her luck! Tears escaped her eyes as happy, breathless laughter left her.

Mandy Mueller was actually alive, and in one piece, and had just teleported at will! She paused, looking up to the waning moon, before wiping her face and spitting out some water that got in her mouth. She had just teleported at will, she repeated for her own thoughts, before two invasive words entered her mind: Holy shit. And that was it. Her circuits were fried at that one. She didn’t even know what to say, other than holy shit. Holy Shit, she actually teleported like she was in a sci-fi movie. Could they even do that in Star Wars? Mandy didn’t even know. Did she know tricks even a Jedi couldn’t master? 

“No— _bluurghh!_ ” She exclaimed, her mouth bobbing under the water as she tossed her hands into the air, slapping down on the surface of the water in her excitement before popping back up and spitting out the water, “No fucking way! _Ha, ha!!_ This is crazy!”

Mandy couldn’t stop the disbelieving grin that stretched across her face, before she was tossing her head back and doing the backstroke through the large body of water, laughing all the while.

* * *

“Hey, are those cops?” Carol questioned, neck craning as she chomped down on a piece of gum, and Mandy paused mid bite, half a chip hanging out of her mouth. Billy looked to the girl curiously as she stared into space, eyes wide.

“Oh, my God, I wonder what happened,” Someone gasped from the group as the Chief of Police hopped out of his suv, righting his belt, “Do you think another person’s been found dead?”

“You guys didn’t hear about the fire?” A voice called from over their shoulders, and Billy turned on his heel, crossing his arms as Steve Harrington swaggered onto the scene, “Apparently, an electrical storm blew through in the night and started a fire in the woods by Loch Nora.”

Mandy resumed chewing slowly, brows furrowed and eyes narrowed, “A storm caused it? I didn’t hear any storm last night. Couldn’t it have been an arsonist?”

“Sounds like a cover up,” Tommy agreed, grinning fiendishly, “More government experiments.”

“Or a loosed psycho,” Mandy shrugged, giving a mocking smile, “With an appetite for destruction.”

“Oh, so the cops are here to finally take you in, Mueller,” Tommy laughed outright in Mandy’s face, and she threw a handful of her chips in his direction, looking irked when he caught one in his mouth and purposefully crunched down on it, “I always knew it would come to this.”

“Them coppers could never take me alive,” Mandy replied blandly, playing along with minimal effort, making Tommy toss his head back and cackle at her. Billy smirked at the two of them as he pulled a cigarette from his carton of Marlboros, before he was looking back to Harrington. 

“You live out there, right, Harrington?” Billy mumbled out as he put the cigarette between his lips, pulling out his lighter and flicking it open. Steve turned to him with a trained expression, the pulling down of his brows being the only thing signaling his displeasure at being addressed by Billy.

The cigarette caught, and Billy took a long drag, blowing it in Steve’s face as he inhaled, making him sputter as he replied, “Yeah— _splaaugh_ —so does Mueller.”

“Hey, whoa,” Mandy cut in, waving her arms between the two of them with a compelling expression, “Nuh-uh, Steve, don’t tell him where I live. I don’t need another stalker.”

Billy pushed his glasses down to give her a pointed look, and Mandy rose her brows in challenge, crossing her arms. So, it seemed she had gotten his tape, and didn’t even suspect him of being the one who sent it. Her brows knitted in the middle fo her face, eyes narrowing as she frowned in his direction. Okay, he amended, maybe she did suspect him, after all. He really couldn’t tell. She always looked pissed off at him, anyway. He grinned at her and wiggled his eyebrows.

“I don’t know about that, Queenie,” Billy began, and Mandy rolled her eyes the second the first syllable left his lips, “Can it really be called stalking when you obviously want me around?”

“Well, I don’t know, Hargrove,” Mandy replied in the same cocky tone he used on her, mimicking his stance, “Can your opinion still be wrong when you are so obviously detached from reality?” 

Mandy tilted her chin up at him, eyeing him with contempt she didn’t even bother trying to hide, and Billy grinned down at her, licking his lips. Her eyes briefly darted down toward his mouth, before she was curling her upper lip and narrowing her eyes distrustingly in his direction. She looked at him like he was a tiger readying to strike at any moment, and she was more than ready to take on the challenge of taming him. It made his blood roar in his veins. He wanted nothing more than for her to try. She might have been the only girl who even had a chance at it, and Billy envisioned her dragging him into the girls’ restroom he had took her into when she busted her lip. She would lock the door and have her wicked way with him, diamond eyes trained on him as she dropped to her knees licked and tasted all the best parts of him. 

“Hey!” A voice broke him out of his reverie, and Billy looked over his shoulder to spy a teacher coming towards their group, “Assembly during fourth period about fire safety!”

“Well, I’m not going to that,” Tommy snorted once the teacher was out of sight, and Mandy rolled her eyes, putting her hands on her the small of her waist and cocking her hip as she turned to face him.

“You’re gonna regret it when you find yourself burning in hell, and without a fucking clue as to how to put yourself out,” Mandy announced snootily, and Tommy made a face at her as Harrington chuckled at her words. Mandy wiggled her brows, and Harrington looked between her and Tommy as they both glared at one another.

“I’m skipping, too,” Billy called drolly in Tommy’s direction, and Mandy barely glanced at him, before she replied.

“No one cares,” She declared icily, raising her brows and shrugging as she swung her bag over her shoulder and trotted off with her nose in the air, “You won’t be missed.”

“Alright, so you’re a fucking bitch!” Billy shouted plainly to her back as she walked further from him, and she turned around and showed him two middle fingers, giving him a nasty look that he ate up. 

“And don’t you forget it!” Mandy called back, before she was turning back around and strutting off, her hips swaying in her long stride. Her goddamn legs were something else in those tight jeans she loved to wear, and Billy found himself squinting in her direction as she walked off, fantasizing about how those legs would feel on either side of his ears.

* * *

“Hey, Mandy!” Carol called over Billy Hargrove’s head as he searched for a lighter in his pockets the following morning, his eyes darting up just in time to watch Mandy Mueller hop out of her car and lock it. The addressed girl looked over her shoulder at the call, momentarily catching his gaze as he peeked at her from above his sunglasses. Her eyes turned cold, brows furrowing momentarily, and he smirked roguishly in reply.

“What?” Mandy called back from afar, looking bored of them before the conversation was even started, and Billy resumed scouring his pockets for his lighter, fresh cigarette dangling from his mouth.

“Did you ever find out who it was?” Carol asked, and Mandy rolled her eyes, her shoulders slumping as she dragged her feet all the way to the small group Billy had nestled himself in.

“Who what was?” Kim Cane, a girl with bright blonde hair and an even brighter smile, asked from under his arm, and Billy looked at her momentarily, pushing his glasses down the bridge of his nose.

“You got a light?” He asked, drawing her attention, and she smiled his way, holding up a finger.

“Oh, yeah! One sec, Babe!” She rummaged through her bag, before handing him a little pink piece of plastic that he rolled his eyes at as he lit his cigarette.

“Thanks,” He grumbled, puffing at his Marlboro as Mandy walked up to them.

Kim laughed easily, “No problem!”

He glanced to her dryly, before his gaze was back on Mueller and her lousy expression.

“Well?” Carol asked eagerly, waving her arms around, “Whose number was it?!”

Mandy groaned, “I don’t know! I didn’t call it!”

Carol gaped, “Well, what was on the tape?!”

“I don’t know!” Mandy looked around bewilderedly, “I didn’t play it!”

Billy didn’t know why he fucking bothered with the girl. The cassette had been a bit of a toss-up, he supposed. There was a great possibility she had no clue it was from him, but another part of him just wanted to believe she would have been smart enough to figure it out. Actually, if she had figured it out, that may have been the reason she hadn’t called. It would have made more sense that way, he realized, and the thought didn’t upset him at all. That was why the cassette was such a good idea—if she rejected him, and he had suspected she would, it wouldn’t even be public, and he could still have fun toying with her in other ways. Although, something about the way she glanced at him from under her thick lashes, looking almost a little unnerved in his presence, made his pulse jump and his brows raise at the possibility of her actually knowing it _was_ from him after she had listened to his mixtape.

“What happened now?” Tommy asked, holding a cigarette between his index and middle finger as he gestured in the girls’ direction lazily.

“Someone left Mandy-Pandy a mysterious tape with a phone number on it,” Carol explained theatrically.

“Oh, romantic!” Kim piped in, and Mandy gave her a furious glare.

“No!” Mandy argued childishly, pouting to herself as she crossed her arms, “It’s not! It’s creepy!”

“You’re so embarrassed,” Carol snorted, taking Tommy’s cig and taking a drag of it, and Billy choked down a chuckle at the way Mandy’s cheeks flooded with a pink hue as she silently fumed. 

“First of all,” Mandy turned her searing gaze from Kim, raising a single index finger before stabbing it into the air in Carol’s direction, “Shut the fuck up! I’m not embarrassed! I’m creeped out! It’s creepy to just leave things like that in someone’s locker! Some may even call it obsessive, Carol!”

“So embarrassed,” Carol laughed outright, and Mandy gasped, “It’s hilarious.”

“I am not!” Mandy cried out indignantly, stomping her foot.

Billy shook his head at her, biting his lip to keep from grinning in her direction. The girl was definitely embarrassed. His stupid tape had Ice Queen Mandy Mueller blushing, and he was eating it up. He committed the frustrated pink on her cheeks to his memory. He kind of wished she could be that color always. Her eyes shot toward him, bright and murderous under her knitted brows, and he knew right then that she had heard that tape and knew exactly who sent it. It probably pissed her off even more, actually, knowing he got to see her mortification.

“You do seem a little embarrassed,” Tommy supplied, nodding along with only vague interest, “Probably ‘cause you’ve been dateless for so long. You’re super lame, Mueller.”

“Okay, you know what?!” Mandy finally exploded at Tommy’s statement and Billy snorted in amusement at the miserable look on her face, Kim giggling at her expression as well, “This is all bullshit! _You’re_ all bullshit! Everything I’m hearing right now is such total bullshit! For all we know it was a death threat on that tape!”

Carol rose her brows, “Was it?”

“I just said I didn’t listen to it, Carol! Clean out your ears!” Mandy shouted, gesticulating wildly, sending her blonde hair flying around her face in every direction as she huffed.

“Well, that’s a real fucking specific thing to assume about a tape, Mandy!” Carol shouted back in reply, her own temper flaring, “You sound like a paranoid weirdo saying shit like that!”

“Well, maybe I am a paranoid weirdo, Carol!” Mandy screeched, fists balling up, “It’s not exactly unfounded, given that I was recently ran over by a fucking car!!”

“Oh, yeah,” Kim mumbled from beside Billy, catching his attention and Mandy’s at the same time, “How have you been, Mandy? You recovering alright?”

Mandy’s eyes widened down at Kim, “Now is not the time, Cam!”

“It’s Kim,” Kim corrected instantaneously.

“Whatever, Camberly,” Mandy sneered dismissively, and Billy barked out a laugh at the name she used. Sometimes, the shit Mandy Mueller said had him absolutely fucking tickled. She was funny when she wasn’t even trying. Mandy narrowed her eyes in his direction and curled up her lip in disgust, scoffing at him, “Oh, give me a break, Hargrove.”

“You were hit by a car, because you’re a bitch to people,” Tommy explained unhelpfully, and Mandy turned her disgusted look on him instead.

“Okay, and?” Mandy shrugged, “What the fuck does that contribute to the argument here?”

“I’m just saying,” Tommy mirrored her loose stance as he shrugged as well, “I’m not trying to argue, I’m just saying that’s the reason.”

“Okay, and?!” Mandy reiterated, her eyes wide as she gestured around her, “Tell me something I don’t know!”

“So,” Kim butted in again, not seeming to care that she was already dismissed, “Are you going to listen to the tape?”

Mandy looked to Kim with disbelieving eyes, “No, I’m not! I’m not interested!”

“Okay, but what if it’s someone you like back?” Kim inquired naively, and Billy rose his brows down at the girl before looking to Mandy with a feigned expression of innocence. Mandy rolled her eyes at him.

“I don’t like _anyone_ ,” Mandy announced coldly, “I’m frigid. Like the Antarctic.”

“Cold as ice,” Tommy inputted, and Mandy nodded along mellowly.

“Cold as ice,” Mandy repeated smoothly.

“Crazy, too, a total psycho,” Tommy tacked on, and Mandy shot him a sharp look, opening her mouth, gaping like a fish for a second before she snapped her jaw shut.

“Okay, whatever—that too,” Many agreed sullenly, “But don’t go around saying that to people, please.”

“Or do,” Tommy nodded eagerly, before whispering in Kim’s direction, “‘Cause it’s true.”

Kim smiled at him, before looking to Mandy dubiously as she put her weight on one leg and cocked her hips, “Yeah, right. You’ve never liked anyone?”

Mandy shook her head, “Not really, what’s to like around here, anyway?”

“I thought you dated Steve Harrington, like two years ago, though!” Kim exclaimed disbelievingly, waving her hands around before she gave pause, “Didn’t you?”

Mandy’s brows shot up, her eyes widening, “Where the fuck did you hear that?!”

“Wait, didn’t you?” Carol asked as she popped a piece of gum in her mouth and began chomping on it, “And he dumped you because you wouldn’t put out?”

“Hm,” Billy mumbled out from around his cigarette, brows raising as he drawled out only half-mockingly, “Queenie, is that true? You need me to kick his ass?”

Mandy looked between Billy and Carol, looking torn at who to yell at first, before she finally settled on staring into Carol’s bland visage.

“Carol! Are you kidding me?!” Mandy screamed, voice both indignant and horrified, “Have you been telling people that?!”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” Carol questioned, cocking her hip as she popped her gum, “I mean, isn’t that what happened with Carmichael in freshman year, too?”

Well, that seemed to do it. Billy stepped back from the scene, nearly dragging Kim Cane by the neck in the process. Kim looked up at him in confusion, before Mandy exploded, her shrieking voice making his ears ring momentarily. Kim shook out her head in response, and Billy stuck his pinky in his ear to try to rid himself of the momentary deafness Mueller’s tone caused. He had only heard the name once before, but he had already figured out whoever that Carmichael guy was, Mandy had an issue with him. He hadn’t figured out what it was, yet, but she definitely held onto some kind of grudge. A part of him suspected it might have been the reason she was so closed off, but he couldn’t have been sure. If it was, Billy thought he might have to hunt down the fucker and kick his ass for making the girl of his dreams so difficult to win over.

“—Honestly! I can’t believe you’re such a gossip whore! And as if I would ever date Steve Harrington of all the boys on planet earth, Carol! You’re so fucking retarded! Ugh!” Mandy screeched, her already flushed face looking even more flustered after her mini-tirade, her hair wild and curling at her temples. It was good look on her, Billy decided. He imagined that same flush on her face would probably be there as she orgasmed, and that would be a damn nice way to see it, he thought. His mind conjured up images of her naked in his lap with that pink on her cheeks and her mouth gasping his name, wispy curls at her temples and her breasts pressed against him as she rode him until completion, hips undulating and nails clawing at him as she lost herself. 

Fuck, he thought as her tight little ass marched off in a huff after her tantrum, he really wanted to have a taste of her. So fucking bad. Why’d she have to make everything so fucking difficult when the world could be so amazing with them together? Virgin or not, he’d take her. He’d have her creaming and mewling like a kitty cat for him if she would just give him the time of day.

“She’s being so fucking irritating lately!” Carol announced into the silence, and Tommy nodded his head.

“Give her a break, her brains are all scrambled from Radner’s car,” Tommy commanded flippantly, shrugging an uninvested shoulder, “Besides, she’s always been nutty, Carol. She’ll be back to normal in a week, probably.”

“I don’t know if I can wait that long!” Carol exclaimed, “I’m not talking to her until she screws her goddamn head on straight, I’m telling you!”

“Um, excuse me?” Kim politely interrupted Carol’s bitch-fit, hand raised as she leaned forward towards the girl, “So, did Mandy and Steve date, or not?”

Carol gave the girl a dirty look in reply, before shooting the look to Billy, as if he was the one at fault for Kim’s cluelessness. Billy reciprocated the dirty look, narrowing his eyes behind his sunglasses and brows twitching down just slightly at her combative look. Bitch had some balls looking at him like that.

“You’re seriously so stupid, Cane,” Carol rolled her eyes as she grabbed Tommy’s arm and stomped off. 

“She’s rude,” Kim declared once they were gone, before stepping out from under Billy’s arm and holding his hand as she asked, “Do you think I’m stupid?”

Well, a little, but it wasn’t the worst thing a girl could be.

Billy knew she didn’t want the truth and furrowed his brows as he answered, “No.”

Kim smiled bashfully in reply, “Well, I know I’m not the smartest, but—“

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” Billy repeated, waving off Carol, “Ignore her, she’s a miserable bitch.”

Kim nodded, “I know. I mean, she kind of has to be to be friends with Mandy Mueller, I guess, but yeesh! Did you see the way they yelled at each other?!”

“Yeah,” Billy nodded along distractedly, sucking down the last of his cigarette before flicking it off and looking to Kim as he blew the smoke from his nose, “Hey, you got any gum?”

“Oh, sure, Babe!”

* * *

Mandy leaned back in her seat in math class, groaning miserably, and Billy had to move his pop quiz from under her mane of gold hair to finish up the page on the corner of his desk. 

“Mueller,” Mr. Mundy called from the front of the class, “You have no reason to be lounging when you’re not done with your work.”

“I am finished,” Mandy replied vacantly, arching her back and stretching her arms with a yawn. The teacher was over in a flash, and Billy rose his brows curiously, peeking over her shoulder to try and see the page before her. Mr. Mundy picked up the piece of paper, looking it over meticulously, eyes darting between Mandy’s head and the work. Finally, he slammed the paper back onto the tabletop.

“Alright, Mueller,” He spoke, his tone agitated and warning, “Who have you been copying, huh?”

Mandy gave an indignant squawk, “No one! No one is even finished yet! Look around!”

Billy did, spying everyone with their pencils in hand and watching the exchange with rapt attention.

“So, you have a tutor?” Mundy questioned, “Or what? You just somehow became a mathematical whiz-kid over night?”

“Uh, the second thing?” Mandy replied uncertainly, her voice having an upward inflection at the end of her statement, “Also, how come I can’t just be smart, huh? Is it because I’m beautiful? Y’know you really shouldn’t look at students like that, it could get you in trouble, Mr. Mundy.”

The man before her sputtered at her statement, adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses as the rest of the class chuckled away at her words.

“Alright, Mueller! Get the hell out!” He pointed toward the hall viciously, and Mandy sighed, rolling her neck.

“I’m technically allowed to leave once I’m done with the quiz, anyway,” Mandy explained under her breath as she shoved her pencil into her bag and stood easily, swinging her bag onto her back. The teacher watched her go, eyes narrowed.

“And don’t come back unless you get an attitude adjustment!” He yelled to her retreating form, making Mandy turn her head to give him a snooty look.

“Well, then,” Was all she said in reply, putting her nose in the air and strutting out of the room with her chin high. The drama of it all had Billy shaking his head in amusement as he finished his quiz, before standing himself and exiting the room with little ceremony while setting his pencil behind his ear.

As he turned the corner, he spotted Mueller flinging open her locker, the cassette he shoved in there earlier tumbling right out onto the floor. He smirked, leaning against the wall at the mouth of the hallway and crossing his arms as he watched her bend to pick it up from the ground, the swell of her ass exposed for his eyes. He cocked his head as he watched her stand back up and look down at the tape with an upturn of her lips. He grinned, biting his lip to reign himself in from making a scene over it—he fucking knew it! He knew she heard that first tape, and he knew she would like it. For as difficult and ornery as she always was, he knew he could get to her with music. After she played AC DC for him, he knew that would be the way to get her attention. He could poke as much as he wanted and get nothing out of her, but he played The Scorpions once and her head snapped right in his direction. 

With a shake of her head, she slipped the tape into the pocket of her oversized denim jacket before grabbing something from her locker and shoving it into her bag. She slammed the locker shut, and Billy ducked back into the hallway he came out of, staying out of sight. He leaned the back of his head against the wall behind him, kicking his heel into the wall as he listened to her fading footsteps.

He wondered if she’d ever call him. Billy didn’t know what he was trying to achieve from all of this, really. To have her, mostly, but another part of him thought it might be even better to keep her. He could be the man who managed to tame the wild thing that was Ice Queen Mandy Mueller. He only had to get her to warm up to him first.

* * *

Hall and Oats thrummed from her car stereo, and Mandy rolled her eyes, leaning back in her seat as she kicked her feet onto her dashboard. Billy fucking Hargrove was an annoying asshole who knew how uninterested she was, and still left another fucking tape in her locker. She really didn’t know why he bothered. 

_“I wouldn’t if I were you, I know what she can do, She’s deadly man, she could really rip your world apart, Mind over matter, Ooh, the beauty is there, but a beast in the heart,”_ Mandy kicked her foot out a little as she listened to the tape, staring up at the fabric of her ragtop unblinkingly. If nothing else, it gave her something to do, she guessed. Decoding the little tapes wasn’t very hard. Killer Queen, Call Me—it was pretty obvious, given the phone number and everything. And a very disloyal and hungry part of Mandy’s mind was wanting something more difficult to puzzle over as the last chords of Maneater played through the speakers. Blondie’s Call Me played right after, and the little niggling part of her that wanted something more completely fizzled out. She almost got her hopes up for a second there, and Mandy frowned at her own deceitful head. How dare any part of her even thinking for one second that these tapes were anything other than annoying!

Man-eater, Call Me.

Same stupid shit, just a different song. Mandy rolled her eyes as she ejected the tape and tossed it in the back of her car with all her other mixtapes. He would run out of songs, eventually.

* * *

The next song was Rich Girl, and Mandy was so unimpressed with it, she tossed the cassette out of her window, watching it sail through the air and land in the bushes behind her house. Eleven had been on her bed, cocking her head with inquisitive eyes.

“Bad?” The young girl asked.

“He’s so lame,” Mandy rolled her eyes, before hopping back onto the bed and sending all the makeup into the air briefly, “Anyway, how do you think you’re going to do your makeup for when you see _Mike Wheeler? OoOoOooh—_ ”

Eleven shook her head, a bashful smile pulling at her lips, “I don’t know—“

The pause had Mandy shooting her a sharp look, “What’s the matter? You don’t want to wear makeup anymore?”

Eleven merely shrugged, looking downcast and shy in equal measure, and Mandy squinted in her direction, trying to catch her gaze, but the little girl avoided her eyes. 

“Well, Kid? What’s eating you?” Mandy asked again, her visage twisted into perplexity.

Eleven looked up at her from under heavy lashes, and when Mandy caught her gaze, she saw flashes of Mike Wheeler and a redhead. They smiled at one another, and her bitterness rocked through her. Every part of her life was crashing around her, and she was losing everything, and some bright haired girl with big blue eyes and a nifty set of wheels was not allowed to take the only thing she had left. She risked everything to see him, and he was smiling at some new girl! And—

Young love was riddled with these problems, honestly. Mandy had tried to warn her, after all. Most people just didn’t understand that love didn’t equate to possession. That people were free to do whatever the hell they wanted, and at the end of the day, people rarely ever did what they were supposed to. How troublesome. She suddenly understood the great interest Eleven took in the ginger girl the morning Mandy had to give Radner the shake down. 

“Oh, Kid,” Mandy moaned, rolling over and smacking her face with an open palm, “Say it ain’t so!”

“I—“ Eleven began, and Mandy merely spoke over whatever excuse she was going to give.

“You’re jealous!” Mandy accused, sounding more bemused than she ought to have as she shot the little girl a pointed look, as if waiting for her to rebuke the fact.

“No!” Eleven cried out, expression pinching into something between shame and unease.

“Kid,” Mandy sighed, rubbing her hand down her face as she rolled into her pile of cosmetics on the bed, “You can’t be jealous of Mike Wheeler making friends. He’s a helpless dork, you have to give him a break.”

“I’m not jealous!” Eleven insisted firmly, her eyes alight with molten intensity.

“ _Kid_ ,” Mandy began again, her voice ringing out in a humdrum tone as she rolled her eyes.

“I’m not!” Eleven whined, before she was grabbing her head in distress and giving a tired exhale, “I-I’m just—well…”

At her pause, Mandy rolled back over and settled with her hands under her chin and her elbows pushing into the bedspread, saddling the young girl with an expectant look. She picked up on a rush of embarrassment, and an overwhelming, tremulous kind of insecurity, and Mandy deflated a little, eyes scouring the young girl’s features with a sudden quietness inside her.

She understood it. Eleven lived in that cabin in the middle of the woods with nothing but her own head for company. It could make even a great mind run into the dumbest of conclusions. And Mike Wheeler was special to Eleven in his own way, Mandy guessed. So, she supposed it was alright for Eleven to be upset by seeing him with another girl—worried even. She just didn’t understand the way the world worked, and to be fair to Eleven and her lack of experience, Mandy had seen plenty other girls lose their minds over a boy they liked under much less strenuous circumstances. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” She said softly, giving Eleven a small smile in hopes to comfort her, “I get it. Almost every girl gets nervous when she has to see the boy she likes, and it’s been forever since you two got to hang out.”

“Really? Eleven asked sheepishly, stammering a little as she continued, “I-I don’t want to look silly. He hasn’t ever seen me with makeup o-or—“

“Listen,” Mandy gave a beleaguered sigh, almost rolling her eyes as she spotted Eleven’s mooning gaze, “There’s something you need to know about boys, okay? Whatever you do, you can’t lose your head over them—“

“Lose my head?” Eleven echoed with pitiable innocence.

“What you’re doing right now,” Mandy explained, motioning with an index finger in her direction, “Feeling less-than? Worrying about making sure you look the way he’d want you to? You cannot do it. You’re allowed to be nervous about your outfit, and your shoes, and your hair and makeup, but you are totally not allowed to play yourself like this.”

“I don’t understand,” Eleven muttered, brows pinching in the middle of her face, “Is there a difference?”

Mandy’s brows jumped toward her hairline as she scrambled to her knees on the bed, “Yes! There totally is!”

“I just want him to be happy to see me,” Eleven murmured, fidgeting her fingers in her lap, “I don’t want him to think I look stupid.”

“El,” Mandy stated with great gravity as she locked her gaze onto Eleven’s eyes, “You take my advice, and the only person who’s gonna look stupid is Mike Wheeler. He’s going to be dumbstruck when he sees you, Kid. He might even drool a little.”

Eleven rolled her eyes, sputtering out a giggle at the imagery, “You’re being ridiculous!”

“Honey, you’re gonna look magical! He’d be a fool _not_ to fall over himself!” Mandy insisted seriously, and Eleven merely rolled back onto the bed giggling while Mandy wobbled to her feet on the squishy mattress and hopped along the edge of the bed around her, sending cosmetics and hair-barrettes flying into the air as she shouted with amusement tickling her tone, “I’m being serious! Don’t laugh at me!”

* * *

“So, it’s definitely an admirer,” Kim announced as she handed Mandy back the walkman as it played Santana’s Black Magic Woman. Mandy liked the song, and a small, treacherous part of her heart warmed as she listened to it knowing Billy Hargrove had heard it and thought of her. She immediately killed that part of her heart, shutting it down so quickly that she swore she felt a cramp in her chest.

“Oh, so it’s not a psycho sending her death threats? Hm, who would have thought?” Carol called out sarcastically, and Mandy rolled her eyes in reply, “Have you bothered to call the number?”

“No,” Mandy shook her head, “I don’t think I’m going to, actually.”

“What?!” Kim exclaimed with bewilderment, her blonde ponytail bouncing behind her as she gesticulated dramatically, “How can you not? He’s sending you love songs! Oh, my God! I would just die if a boy sent me love songs!”

“They’re not love songs,” Mandy contradicted, rolling her eyes, “Literally, two of the songs so far were Hall and Oates.”

Carol snorted, “Let me guess, Rich Girl was one of them.”

“Yeah,” Mandy answered with similar dry amusement, before turning to Kim, “And I’m not, because like I told you before, I’m not interested.”

“Well, ugh!” Kim groaned, tossing her head back in dismay, “Why not?! He’s probably, like, in love with you! Do you really want to risk being old and lonely one day and knowing you missed this opportunity?!”

Mandy made a face, her nose scrunching up as she opened her mouth to reply, before Tommy’s voice interceded her, “What are you girlies doing over here, huh?”

Mandy sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose, “Nothing.”

“Talking about Mandy’s secret admirer,” Carol announced right over her reply, and Mandy gave her a nasty look.

“Oh, really?” Steve Harrington’s unexpected voice called from behind her, making Mandy nearly jump out of her skin, “Do you know who it is?”

“She won’t call the number ‘cause she’s scared of finding true love!” Kim shouted, and Mandy smacked her arm in punishment.

“I just said I’m not interested!” Mandy insisted indignantly, “What the fuck is wrong with everyone’s hearing?!”

“It’s because she’s scared of having her heart broken! She’s only ever loved once before!” Kim cried melodramatically, tossing her head back and feigning woe as she place a dainty hand to her forehead, “And he died in the war! She told herself she’ll never love again!”

“Jesus, you’re a spaz,” Mandy huffed, crossing her arms and shifting her body away from Kim with a sneer. 

Billy Hargrove sidled up to Kim, right opposite of Mandy in the little circle they formed, and Mandy rolled her eyes, refusing to meet his gaze. He was such a pussy to send her secret music and then just act like it was nothing, and she was so over it.

“Secret admirer, huh?” Hargrove’s voice rasped, face straight, “Do you suspect anybody?”

“Well, y’know, I’m really popular and good-looking so it’s anybody’s guess,” Mandy snarked bitterly, cocking her hip and tapping her foot in her vexation. Fucking Billy Hargrove and his poker face could take a first class ticket straight to hell as far as she was concerned. He smirked at her response, remaining silent. She got visions of him pouncing on her and heaving her legs around his hips, his mouth finding hers. Gag. As if that would ever happen. Hargrove just couldn’t give it a rest. What a lovesick loser.

“Well, that’s nice, Mandy,” Steve nodded, hands on his hips, “You deserve to be happy.”

Mandy’s face scrunched up in reply as she whipped her head around to give Harrington a look that was both confused and disgusted, “Ew! Don’t say it’s nice, Steven! I just fucking said I’m not interested! What the fuck is wrong with everybody!? Am I in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers or what?!”

“Well, it’s not like you’ve got many options after the whole Radner thing, Honey,” Carol inputted, snapping her gum, “Nobody wants to date roadkill.”

_“I’m not interested!”_ Mandy insisted vehemently, smacking the back of one of her hands into her palm pointedly, “In anybody! Ever! What part of that is nobody getting?!”

“The part when you say ‘not’, maybe?” Kim suggested with an upward inflection as she looked like she was going to sympathize with Mandy for a moment before she continued on, “And also, I don’t believe you. He gave you a tape with Santana on it. He definitely loves you, and there’s no way you feel nothing if you showed it to us.”

“Ooh, Santana? He wants to _fuuuuuck_ you,” Tommy suggested, confirming things Mandy already knew and never wanted to hear aloud.

Mandy groaned, rubbing her temples, before she finally exclaimed, “You’re all idiots! How can you even say this shit with straight faces? Why would I ever have interest in a guy who is too chicken shit to approach me himself?! Huh? Who wants to date a pussy like that?!”

Tommy agreed eagerly, cackling out a wheezy little laugh, “I agree. He sounds like a pussy.”

“Aw, c’mon, Mueller,” Harrington jostled her shoulder easily, “Go easy on him. You’re kinda scary when you want to be.”

Mandy shrugged him off with an offended expression as Carol announced out of the blue, “I bet he’s grody. Only some sicko would have a crush on Mandy.”

Mandy scoffed, placing a single hand on her hip and swiveled her head around to level Carol with a cutting look, “Oh, really, Carol?”

“Don’t give me that look,” Carol warned, blowing a bubble and popping it with a smack, “You think it, too. It’s the real reason you won’t have interest in any guy who likes you.”

Mandy schooled her features into that of practiced derisiveness, but on the inside, she was shitting bricks. Carol was not allowed psycho-analyze her by accident! Carol was an idiot—a major idiot who gave toothy blowjobs—and she was not allowed to smack talk the shit out of Mandy while she was in the middle of a crisis. Fucking little bitch! Mandy dipped into her consciousness. She was going to find the most horrifying secret Carol kept and fucking ruin her with it. Pictures flew by her eyes, sounds screaming as they rushed passed her, before Mandy landed on something she could use, the whole world pausing as her eyes glowed with all her bad ideas.

“That’s a lot of fucking talk from a girl who got blown off after losing her virginity to a guy,” Mandy sneered back, and Carol’s dry amusement shifted into stark bewilderment, Tommy looking to his girlfriend with a vacant expression as he picked up on the sudden turn of mood.

“Uh, she lost her virginity to me,” Tommy stated, face scrunching up in confusion as he gave a strangled, discomfited laugh, “What the hell are you talking about, Mueller?”

Mandy look pointedly to Carol, eyes knowing as she smiled vindictively, “Is that what she told you, Tomcat? And you believed her? Aw, how cute.”

Carol gave a shallow breath in reply, her jaw working as she ground her teeth together, and Mandy could see the chaos unfolding behind her eyes. Hellfire and mayhem was reigning in Carol’s mind. She was being ousted, and she was fucking pissed about it. Her whole consciousness was chanting the word bitch over and over, while she dreamed of all kinds of terrible things. Carol was going to get Mandy if it was the last thing she did. Mandy Mueller wouldn’t know what hit her. Carol was going to ruin her one way or another, and she didn’t care if she had to hit her with another car to do it. Mandy grinned even wider as she felt the swelling anger within Carol’s silent form, expecting some kind of outburst. None came, though, and Carol pinched her lips together, her complexion turning frighteningly white, before she was turning and stomping off in deafening silence.

Tommy looked between Mandy and Carol with obvious distress, before pointing to Mueller with narrowed eyes, his voice taking on a unsettled tone, “Mueller, you better be fucking with me right now.”

Mandy laughed in his face, her white teeth looking more predatory than ever before.

“Mueller! I’m not fucking around here! Say you were lying!” Tommy yelled approaching her with quick steps and violent intention clear in his stance. Mandy backed up a few steps as he tried to round on her, laughing as she danced out of his reach. Billy Hargrove stepped between the two of them, arms spread as he corralled Tommy’s angry form away from Mandy, cigarette still hanging from his lips.

“Hey, man, it’s between you and Carol,” Billy interceded on Mandy’s behalf, waving his arms around easily, “You’re not really pissed with her.”

Harrington stepped forward as well, looking to Mandy with curiosity shining in his gaze before he turned to Tommy, “Yeah, c’mon, chill. It’s all good. You should go talk it out with Carol. I’m sure this is all just a big understanding, anyway. You know Mueller’s a drama queen—always blowing things out of proportion.”

Tommy looked to the two boys before him, before spying Mandy’s smug face between them as she grinned from between their shoulders, and frowned deeply in her direction. His mind was a chaotic tangle of confusion, all wound up with his betrayal. Tommy couldn’t believe he lost his virginity to a girl who fucking lied to him. Without looking, Harrington reached back and pushed her head down and out of Tommy’s line of sight, and Mandy couldn’t get anymore from his mind. 

“Oh, c’mon, Steve!” Mandy blustered in a hissed whisper as she tried to swat Steve’s hand away from her face, and Billy peeked back to her as she struggled, a single brow quirking up.

Mandy heard Tommy heave a sigh before he agreed, “Yeah, alright, I should probably go talk to her, she seemed upset.”

Tommy walked off, and once he was out of sight, Steve used his hand on her head to pettily ruffle her hair, before shoving her by the head away from him. Mandy allowed herself to be pushed, stepping back as Steve rounded on her, looking disappointed and thoroughly unhappy with her. Mandy gave him a flat stare as Hargrove turned and eyed both of them with poorly disguised interest, before he finally settled his heavy gaze on her, looking vaguely impressed. She didn’t know what was so impressive, really, but she suspected she knew what Steve was mad about. 

“Mueller!” Steve’s tone was admonishing, and Mandy rolled her eyes, flipping her hair from her face and back over her shoulder.

“What, Steve?!” She asked, looking around her innocently, “It’s not like I lied or anything!”

“Oh, my God! You didn’t?!” Kim proclaimed, looking to her with an eager gasp, “Who’d she lose it to, then?!”

Mandy’s eyes widened when she was suddenly reminded of Kim’s presence again, before she grinned in response, wiggling her eyebrows villainously as she tucked her hair behind her ears and licked her lips, “Okay, well, you didn’t hear this from me, but—“

“Mandy!!” Steve roared, making Mandy jump in response.

_“Whaaat?”_ Mandy whined pitifully, “You ruin everything, Steve, honestly! Stop ruining my fun!”

“Fun for you is breaking up people?! You very seriously could have destroyed Tommy and Carol’s relationship! Your _friends’_ relationship! Don’t you care?!” Steve yelled down at her, waving a hand in the direction the disastrous duo had vacated, and Mandy rose her brows in reply.

“About what? Carol’s a bitch, and she deserved what she got,” Mandy shrugged haplessly, brows turning down, “And Tommy’s super rude to me all the time. What’s to feel bad for?”

“Jesus, Mueller, you’re heartless!” Steve exclaimed as he dismissed her presence with a flick of hand, “There’s something wrong with you!”

Steve turned away from her, hanging his head and stalking off, grumbling to himself. Mandy could pick up on his disappointment with her, and his mind playing on repeat: _What the hell is wrong with her? What made her like this?_

“Aw, c’mon, Steve!” Mandy called out plaintively to his retreating form, “Don’t be like that!”

He didn’t reply, only turning to eye her miserably from over his shoulder briefly, before he was out of her line of sight. She just knew he was going to hold this over her, and she hated the very thought of it. Mandy scowled at his back as he marched off, before turning to the last two people left with a vacant expression, trying to hide the rotten feeling that was building inside her by the second.

“Well, he’s gone,” Kim announced, looking to Mandy expectantly, and Mandy sighed in reply.

Mandy Mueller just kept starting fires, it seemed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Preview for the next chapter:
> 
> _"...Looked like you liked that nothing for a second."_
> 
> and also, 
> 
> _"Mandy Mueller just took a whole load to the face!"_


	11. (Bad) Luck of the Irish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mandy Mueller makes a new friend. :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First thing first, major thanks to Jess for feeding my tired lil imagination over these passed few days! Girl, you are AMAZING!! <3 and also to Ahroses (why do I wanna call you my ride or die??? lmao you always leave the best comments! <3) and Redesiuk for giving me so many different ideas! You guys are so gr8 <3! to everyone else who left so many nice, encouraging messages! You guys are so lovely! I'm always so flattered and amazed that ppl like my writing, lol. Thank you so much! <3
> 
> also, as a big note: yes, I do know how to spell Freddie Mercury, okay?? I know yall are reading this like "Why TF is that being brought up???" just trust me, okay? lol
> 
> and fun lil spoiler: Max shows up!! she's not around for too long, buT SHE'S THERE!!! :D
> 
> and, as usual, there is plot somewhere in here. I swear >___>

Carol, Tommy, and Steve were all being bitches. They had all iced Mandy out completely—the only thing she got out of them were dirty looks, and Mandy was just fucking fine with that. It didn’t bother her at all, and Mandy would happily scream it from the rooftops. Without Carol and Tommy, Mandy’s school life was 50% less dramatic, and it was great. Or, well, it should have been anyway, but for some inexplicable reason, she felt off about it.

_“I can’t seem to face up to the facts, I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax, I can’t sleep ‘cause my bed’s on fire, don’t touch me I’m a real live wire,”_ Her walkman fed her ears the upbeat tempo of Talking Heads’ ‘Psycho Killer’, and Mandy couldn’t stop the smile that came to her face unbidden as she walked through the school parking lot, eyes trained on the ground as she watched out for any puddles the recent rain brought along.

Billy Hargrove and his mixtapes were the only thing that entertained her anymore, but she’d lie if anybody asked her about it. School was lackluster, and the lessons were a well-practiced tedium, and Mandy’s head liked to float off in the middle of the day. It had become more frequent. Her mind would just split. She’d stare at the blackboard in front of her, and see the words, but in her mind, she’d watch the earth turn from the surface of the moon. Gas giants burned bright in the blackened blanket of space, and the colorful vending machine in the hall would look like a child’s crayon box in comparison. 

Eleven stopped by more often. Mandy realized belatedly that it was because she was actually coming to visit Mike Wheeler, and just popped by to check on her as an afterthought. Mandy found that one out by accident when she spotted Wheeler with his little friend group in the middle school playground, Eleven lingering on the outside of the circle they had formed as they spoke. She stared so long that one of the boys in the group had caught her eye and turned to the group, pointing in her direction rather rudely. It had snapped her out of her trance, and she marched off out of sight.

Her head had been so full for so long with high school gossip, her own craziness, and Eleven’s apparition, that now that most of it was at a lull, she felt uneasy. The calm, isolated world around her was unsettling and unnatural, and Mandy didn’t know what to do about it. She couldn’t tell if the calm was the kind that came before the storm or the kind that came after, and she was on edge.

Blondie’s ‘Call Me’ began playing, and Mandy had to force herself to not sing along. She had heard that damn song so many times in the past week and a half that she knew it by heart. Mandy removed her headphones from her ears and placed them around her neck as she unlocked her car.

“What are you listening to?” A voice brought her out of her thoughts, and Mandy pivoted around easily, peeking up from under her black sunglasses. Billy Hargrove stood behind her, leaning against the hood of his car, smoking a cigarette between his lips and fiddling around with something in his hands that she couldn’t see from her position.

Mandy narrowed her eyes, giving him a clipped, “Nothing.”

“Hm,” He began, taking long drag of his cigarette thoughtfully, his brows jumping on his face as he twisted his body and looked over his shoulder at her, “Nothing, huh? Looked like you liked that nothing for a second.”

“Maybe I did,” Mandy shot back snootily, cocking her hip and sending him a scathing look, “But I have come to my senses since then.”

Billy Hargrove shook his head, smirking as he breathed a long stream of smoke from his nostrils, “Another song from your secret lover boy?”

Ugh! The audacity of Billy Hargrove to talk to her about the cassettes as if it wasn’t him sending them! Mandy didn’t understand a single fucking thing he did. It was like he just needed something to do half of the time he was tormenting her. He sent her music, and then pretended to not be the person sending it. She didn’t get it. What was the point of the ruse? He had come onto her a few times, and had said some gross, overtly sexual things to her in the past, so what was the big deal? Why not cop to it? She just didn’t fucking get it!

“Yeah,” Mandy replied vacantly, a frown firmly on her lips that didn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon. Billy rose his brows even higher at her reply.

“Oh?” He asked, pocketing something as he righted himself and turned to face her from across the bonnet of his car, “Did you figure out who it was?”

So that was it. Billy Hargrove really thought she was so stupid that she didn’t know it was him. He actually believed her when she said she would never call the number. What a tool. Like, as if she wasn’t going to call the number! When a mystery was put before her, Mandy took to it like a dog on a bone. She was going to gnaw away at it, until she got to the juicy secrets inside.

Mandy squinted in his direction, sniffing slightly as she turned her nose up haughtily, “No. I don’t care enough to find out.”

Hargrove’s entire consciousness was focused on her. She got images of her hair, tussled from a long, miserable day at school and curling in all the wrong places, and Mandy tucked it behind her ears to try and tame it. She could feel his disappointment, the longing and the want. The inside of his mind was a cavernous pit of echoing wistfulness. When, when, when. _When will she see its me? She has to know it’s me. When will she call? When will she give up the game and just fucking call already? She’s driving me crazy. Every fucking thing she does drives me fucking crazy!_ He was impatient, it seemed—on edge and fidgety for some reason. She didn’t understand the hang up, really. Nothing made sense to her when it came to Hargrove. He was just so backwards. If he was so impatient, then why not just ask her out and get it over with? It just seemed so stupid to her.

“Haven’t called the number, then?” He flicked his cigarette into the pavement at his feet, stomping it out forcefully as he puffed out the last of his smoke from the corner of his lips, looking frustrated as he refused to look her way.

“Nope,” Mandy shrugged innocently, eyes trained in Hargrove’s direction and expression even as she announced, “I mean, I guess if he had sent me some better music, maybe I’d be interested. But I don’t know, the only good song he’s sent so far is Black Magic Woman. Maybe I’m just being stuck up like usual.”

Billy shot her an unamused glance, eyes cutting into her as he frowned, “Sounds like you’re being stuck up.”

The miserable look on his face would have been enough to send her into a fit of wicked, mocking laughter, but she refused to cave. Now, this was a game. She was going to ride out this little mystery for as long as possible, playing dumb until she had nothing left. Hargrove was walking himself right down a path of inevitable disaster. It was his own fault, and Mandy really didn’t feel bad about it.

“Hm,” Mandy hummed in thought, looking distinctly contemplative, “Probably. I usually am. I can’t help it. Being a bitch might be genetically programmed into me, honestly.”

Billy narrowed his eyes in her direction, and she knew she laid it on too thick. Well, shit. How could she have fucked up so soon into the game? Why wasn’t she a better actor!? And why the hell was Hargrove so perceptive?! Ugh, what a dickhead, seriously!

His mind was honed in on every part of her, and she hated it. 

“Yeah, maybe,” He replied, voice low and slow, giving her a look that looked more sexual than it ought to have been given she was currently shit-talking him in a roundabout way. Mandy’s brows pinched together pitifully as she spotted the look on his face. What the fuck? She didn’t even say anything that could be remotely sexualized! Ugh, she really hated him. What a backwards freakazoid.

“Sorry!” A voice broke through their small bubble, a small red head shoving passed her, breathing heavily as she called out, “I’m late! I know, I know!”

Billy’s gaze cut from Mandy to the little girl before him, and he rolled his eyes, pinching his lips. Whatever fire was in him was doused out at the arrival of the girl. His mind was like a freshly smothered candle, only little tendrils of smoke remaining of what was once a hungry flame. Mandy rose her brows as she looked between the two, smirking as the girl whipped around in her direction.

“Oh, my God,” The girl breathed out, eyes wide in her direction, and Mandy cocked her head, crossing her arms. 

So this was the girl from Eleven’s memories, Mandy recalled from the back of her mind. She almost couldn’t believe Eleven was actually jealous of her. She was just a little dweeb. Like, yeah, she was cute with her bright sky-blue eyes and all, but she was a major tom-boy. She couldn’t have gotten Mike Wheeler if she actually tried. Comparing the two girls would have been like comparing Molly Ringwald to Princess Leia— both were awesome in their own ways, but they were in totally different dimensions. It would be unfair to even think of comparing women who were just so out of each others’ realms, and Mandy wanted to give a sigh at poor little Eleven and her naivety. 

“Are you talking to me?” Mandy asked with dry good-humor ringing clear in her tone as she looked over her shoulder jokingly, “Ain’t no god around here, Honey.”

“Oh, my _God!”_ The girl reiterated, pointing in her direction before turning her attention on Hargrove again and whispering loudly, “You _really_ know her? I can’t believe it! She’s the girl who—“

“Alright, yeah, yeah,” Hargrove cut her off mid-sentence, and Mandy deflated a little. She was kind of looking forward to hearing what great thing she had done and was known for, “I know, I know. Just get in the car.”

“You’re the girl who was hit by the car!” The girl exclaimed, and Mandy’s ego punctured, air wheezing out of it pitifully, before the girl’s next words eased her wounded pride, “Right? That’s you! I heard you _killed_ Mitchell Radner’s sister!!”

Mandy perked up, smiling toothily in reply, “Is that really what you heard? Ha! That’s hilarious!”

“Maxine,” Hargrove gritted out warningly, and the girl, Maxine, turned to give him a wide-eyed stare.

“What? It’s true, isn’t it?” She muttered innocuously, “It’s not like, a lie, or anything.”

“Get in the car,” He commanded, staring down to the shorter girl, and Mandy rolled her eyes in his direction, making a childish face that Maxine caught from the corner of her eye and smiled at.

“It isn’t a lie, Hargrove,” Mandy agreed readily, voice pointed and adenoidal as she nodded along, “People are calling me Mike Meyers, after all. Naming me after a psycho killer, y’know?”

The red head gaped, snorting a little, “Oh, my God! Really? That’s pretty awesome!”

“Maxine,” Billy cut into the conversation, catching the girl’s attention, and making her look up to him with big, innocent eyes, “In.”

Mandy rose her brows, leaning against her car as she cocked her head and kicked out a single boot from her position reclined, “Is it, though? I’m not so sure.”

“Hell yes!” The red head nodded as she began stuffing her backpack into the car distractedly, “Now, no one will ever mess with you! No one would ever screw with a psycho killer!”

Mandy shrugged, curling her lip up as she contemplated the girl’s words, “No one in their right mind, but this town is filled with kooks, man. Or maybe people just like harassing me, I haven’t figured out which yet.”

Hargrove stopped trying to herd Maxine into the car to shoot Mandy a narrow-eyed look, echoing her incredulously, “You haven’t figured out which yet?”

Mandy looked to him innocuously, shrugging helplessly, “Well, I haven’t!”

Billy shifted on his feet, placing a single hand on his hip as the other waved around lazily, “Can’t it be both?”

Mandy paused as well, mimicking his posture as she straightened, “Well, I guess. But is it both, Hargrove? Or only one?”

“What if it’s neither?” Maxine inputted, making both older teens look at one another confusedly, before turning their slanted eyes in the redhead’s direction, “What if nobody is messing with you at all? What if you’re just—” The pause she gave was punctuated by an awkward twist of her lips before she finally announced like the smartass she was, _“Emotionally fragile?”_

“Excuse me?!” Mandy’s brows furrowed in the little girl’s direction as she scrunched up her face, “You must have me confused with someone else, you grody little leprechaun!”

Hargrove’s face went through several different expressions at hearing her indignant shout—one being straight shock—before he finally wheezed out a crackling laugh at her words, tossing his head back as he leaned away from the redhead beside him. Maxine looked between Mandy and Billy with varying degrees of distaste, before scoffing snootily and clamoring into the car with no other words. Billy brought up a hand to cover his amusement, coughing pathetically as he calmed down.

“You—“ He began, wagging a finger in Mandy’s direction with a grin before shaking his head, “You’re too much sometimes, Queenie, I swear.”

“I’m just right, Goldilocks,” Mandy retorted, cocking her hip and tapping the toe of her boot on the ground, “Don’t get it twisted.”

Billy merely smiled at her as his laughter settled, parroting her own words, “Leprechaun, funny. I hadn’t thought of that one yet.”

“I wasn’t trying to be,” Mandy announced dryly, “And if she was gonna get all offended about it, she shouldn’t have even started it.”

“I’m right here!” Maxine shouted from inside the car, and Mandy leaned into the window to stick her tongue out childishly as Hargrove worked his way to the driver’s side of the car.

“No one asked, Twerp!” Mandy shouted back, blowing a raspberry in her direction.

“Ugh! Grow up!” The red head curled her lip up in disgust, “You’re so childish! No wonder you got hit with that car! You probably haven’t learned to look both ways yet!”

“Top o’ the mornin’ to ye as well!” Mandy proclaimed with a terrible Irish accent, pretending to tip a hat in the girl’s direction, and Hargrove shook his head as he slid into the driver’s seat.

“Ugh!” Maxine growled out, her cheeks turning a similar shade of red to that of her hair. Mandy merely wiggled her eyebrows in response, leaning against the car as she grinned into the window.

“They’re after me lucky charms!” She cried out in her terrible Irish accent, “Go on, Leprechaun! Say it!” 

“She’s awful, Billy!” The girl wailed indignantly, turning away from the window pane and looking to the driver, “How can she be the coolest girl in high school?! This place really sucks!”

Billy’s riotous laughter was heard from within the cabin of the car, and Mandy, for once, didn’t mind the sound of it. Mandy inched closer to the glass and let out a long breath against it, letting it fog up, before writing on the window in backwards, disjointed lettering. Mike Meyers was here, it read, and Mandy pressed a little kiss to the end of the message, her lips leaving a little heart shape in the condensation. More yelling and laughter was heard from within the car as Hargrove started up the engine, making Mandy pull herself away from the door a safe distance away to avoid being ran over.

The car reversed quickly, tires kicking up dust all around her, and Mandy hacked against the plume that went right into her nose, trying to wave it away. ZZ Top blasted from within the car as Hargrove shifted into drive, a toothy grin on his face still. 

_“She’s so fine, She’s all mine, Girl, you got it right—”_

“See you around, Psycho Killer!” He called as he tore out of the parking lot, and Mandy simply tilted down her chin and gave him a bland glance from over her sunglasses in reply. Fucking lying Billy Hargrove, and his annoying music selection, and his stupid sunny smile.

* * *

“Hey! Open this goddamn door!” 

Billy Hargrove rose his brows down at Kim Cane, a sporty girl with a tight little body, and leaned a single arm into the doorframe above the girl’s head. Distantly, he heard disco music and cringed, trying to reign in his dislike.

“It’s fine,” He sighed, “Just let it go. Someone’s probably busy in there. We’ll find somewhere else, it’s not a big deal.”

Kim turned her heated gaze onto him, shouting indignantly, “This is my room! If I want to have sex on my own bed, then I goddamn will!”

Billy tried to refrain from rolling his eyes, deciding to instead lean into her, grinding into her ass teasingly. She yelped as he pushed against her, and he lowered his voice into a deep husk for his next words, uttered into the side of her head, “Let’s go somewhere else. Besides, it’s more fun without a bed.”

Kim giggled, turning to glance at him coquettishly from over her shoulder, brows arched up with poorly feigned innocence, “More fun? Prove it.”

* * *

Who the hell had this many posters? Mandy squinted up at the pale yellow walls, face scrunched up painfully as she stared up into the million eyes of George Michael. And who the hell liked George Michael this much? Talk about obsessed! 

She walked around the bed, staring in bewilderment at all the paraphernalia, before promptly face-planting into the carpet as she stumbled over a can of hairspray. Sputtering in disgust as she tasted the lint-y material, Mandy lifted her head and gagged. She looked back to what she fell on, spotting the can and standing to kick it across the room bitterly. Huffily, she plopped back onto the bed afterwards, grabbing a magazine and opening it to the cosmetics section as she lounged. It was nice to get some time to herself. The room was quiet and warm, and Mandy’s muscles loosened, her whole being sinking into the plush mattress beneath her. 

“Whoa!” She shrieked as she was rudely awakened by something crashing into her and making the bed bounce.

“Mueller!” Someone yelled, “Can’t you see we’re busy?!”

“I was just here minding my business, Asshole!” Mandy yelled back in outrage, before spotting Jamie Morrow and a girl on the bed, collapsed around her in a mass of limbs.

“Honestly, Mandy, who the hell takes a nap at a party?!” Jamie fumed, “You’re fucking unbelievable!”

“I wasn’t napping!” Mandy shouted back in her own defense, before belatedly realizing that she was, in fact, napping. She actually must have been asleep for a while, given the drunkenness of the people in the room with her. It shocked her, honestly, because she hadn’t even left her body that time. Weird. Maybe it was from the alcohol, she thought hazily, although she only had two beers. Well, two Coronas, and like, a whole bag of Tostitos. Maybe it was the tortilla chips, in actuality. She didn’t have a single clue. Her whole life made no sense.

“Yeah, right, Bitch!” Jaime shouted back, “You’re so lame!”

“Whatever, Shortstack!” Mandy shouted with equal amounts irritation and confusion as she tried to climb out from underneath the two half-undressed bodies. Jamie was at her back, corralling her to the door and promptly shoving her into the hallway, making her stagger over something and slam into the opposing wall, causing all the hanging family portraits to jump and fall crookedly on their hooks.

“Get a life, Lameass!” Morrow yelled as he slammed the door, and Mandy gaped.

“Grow a few inches, Peewee!” Mandy shrieked back indignantly at the closed door, before she stomped her foot petulantly. 

“Kimmy!” A little voice sounded from under nose, and Mandy looked down in confusion, her anger evaporating, “Kimmy! Those boys—“

“I’m not Kimmy,” Mandy called down to the little boy, who looked up at her with watery eyes and a snotty nose. He sniffled, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his Spiderman pajamas, and Mandy cringed, nose scrunching up in disgust.

“Where is Kimmy?! The mean boys took Freddy and Mercury!” The child shouted up at her, and Mandy’s eyes nearly crossed at the shrill pitch his voice took on as he wailed, face crumpling up with pain and cheeks reddening furiously. Why was everyone shouting at her? Couldn’t she take a nap without being shouted at about it?

“Okay!” Mandy yelled, “Okay, okay! Stop crying like that! We’ll find Kimmy!”

“No!” The boy screamed, “We need to get Freddy and Mercury!”

Mandy squinted down at the child, her pitch beginning to match his in her distress, “The singer of Queen?!”

“My fishes!” He corrected in a shrill yell, and Mandy paused, blinking down at him.

“What?” She asked vacantly.

“Those boys took my fishies!” The little boy wailed, “They’re gonna eat them!!”

A soft gasp left her, before Mandy’s eyes widened at his words, “What?! Where’d they go?!”

He pointed behind her, and Mandy turned around to spy the stairwell, before turning and grabbing the back of his shirt and tugging him along, “Alright, let’s go save your fucking fish from becoming sushi!”

“Thanks, Miss Lady,” The child sniffled as Mandy dragged him along by the back of his shirt, holding him out at arm’s length so his snotty little baby hands wouldn’t come near her, “Nobody else cared.”

“It’s Mandy,” Mandy corrected as she stomped down the staircase, spotting a large group of boys playing beer pong on the far side of the room. 

“Thanks, Miss Mandy,” The little boy amended, and Mandy rolled her eyes above his head tiredly. She didn’t know why she bothered. Kids were so dumb.

They made their way through the party, weaving through the packed rooms. First was the living room, where a big group was shouting and ooh’ing over a game of beer pong, and she had nearly left the room, Mandy’s foot just passing the threshold, when she heard a shout over the music.

“Ha! You gotta chug the fuckin’ fish, Tommy!” The words had Mandy spinning on her heels, her boots clacking against the hardwood in a clamber, the child beside her making a sound of dissent, trying to tug her along. Mandy yanked him back to her, grabbing him around the waist with a single arm and lugging him through the crowd like she was a linebacker.

She just broke through the crowd as Tommy grabbed the red solo cup, and she roared murderously as he moved it towards his lips, “Move the cup from your face or fucking die, Shithead!” 

Tommy moved the cup away from his face, and crumpled it, his cheeks expanded like a chipmunk, and his face screwed up in disgust. Mandy screamed, dropping the child and cupping her palms together as she closed in on him and yelled to him, “ _Spit it out!_ Spit it out, you dumb idiot! Spit it out, or so help me! Spit it out before I make you, Asshole!”

The entire contents of Tommy’s mouth exploded into Mandy’s face, a small projectile slapping her across the cheek, and Mandy reared back, sputtering and wiping at her eyes as Tommy and the rest of the boys laughed riotously. 

“Mandy Mueller just took a whole load to the face!”

“Oh, my God, your face, Mike Meyers!”

“That’s what you get, Mueller!”

“Mercury!” The little boy beside her cried out, dropping to his knees and fumbling along the ground to catch the floundering goldfish. Mandy gave a little sound of distress as she wiped the rest of her face, her lips curling up in disgust.

“Are you fucking kidding me!?” Mandy screeched, jarring two fingers into his chest, before giving it up and just shoving him like she really wanted to, “You think you’re real fucking funny?! Well, guess wh—“

“Miss Mandy! I got Mercury!” The little boy called, holding out his cupped hands and showing her the gasping fish, “She’s dying! We need water! Hurry!”

Mandy gaped down at him momentarily, before she returned her expression to its previous fury as she turned back to Tommy, “This isn’t over, Shithead! I’ll be back!”

She turned on her heel, grabbing the little boy around the waist and lugging him through the crowd and into the kitchen. The boys she left in her wake cajoled and jeered at her back as she scampered away. 

The little boy cupped his hands close to his chest as Mandy set him back on the ground and began swinging open all the cabinets above them. She found nothing deep enough to hold water and a fish, and dropped to the ground on her hands and knees to crawl between people’s legs, shoving them out of the way to search the lower cabinets. By the time she returned to her feet with a pot in hand, she was out of breath and flushed. She went to the sink, switching it on and filling the pot, before turning back to face the little boy. She encountered a tiny problem when she couldn’t spot him, though, and promptly flung the pot onto the counter top in her irritation and distress, letting the water spill across the tile and onto the floor as she began running through the crowd to find him.

“Little boy!” She screamed at the top of her lungs, “Jesus Christ! What was his name?!”

Fuck! She hadn’t even got his name! How the hell was she ever going to find him?! She lamented silently, her breaths dragging loudly through her lungs as she did a full circuit of the kitchen, the entire throng of teens shouting her name with varying degrees of annoyance and amusement as she shoved through them. She gave a little panicked groan as she left the kitchen when she couldn’t find him, “ _Uuughhh!_ Little boy!? Mercury!! Where’d you go?!”

She wove through the living room, finding herself in front of Tommy again, who turned to her with a cocky expression and crossed arms, “You back for more, Psycho?”

“No, you fucking loser!” Mandy shouted in his face, shoving him out of her way as she passed him. He gave a shout of anger as he ricocheted off her and into a table, knocking over a bowl of beverage as Mandy tore through the room distractedly.

“Fucking Bitch!”

She couldn’t find the little boy anywhere! She checked the kitchen and the living room, and had walked through the dining room and even checked under the table there. She had just made her way towards the side of the house, when she spotted a mysterious door at the end of a long corridor, her face lighting up. That had to be it. He had to be there! She literally checked the whole floor besides there!

“Annoying brat!” She shouted knowingly as she stormed through the door, only to pause as a shrill scream rang through her ears, before declaring plainly, “Ugh. Oh, my God, I am deaf now.”

“Mandy!” Kim Cane shouted from her position in Billy Hargrove’s lap, her tits exposed to Mandy eyes. Hargrove angled his head back from his position laid out on the hood of a Mercedes Benz, looking to her with wide-eyes as his hands went to cover up Kim’s bare chest. Both were flushed and glistening with sweat, half-undressed, mid-coitus, and completely horrified by her sudden entrance.

Mandy couldn’t manage a single coherent thought after baring witness to the sight before her. She was almost shocked over the fact that she hadn’t heard Billy Hargrove’s hurricane of a mind behind the door, only to realize why. It was strangely quiet, the flutter of his pulse and the low pull of pleasure in his groin was all she could pick up on from him. Her stomach plummeted as she froze wide-eyed in the doorway, and she was almost positive it was Kim Cane’s roaring embarrassment she was picking up on in her head.

“Oh, my God,” Mandy announced dully, shaking out her head and looking completely baffled still as she tried to blink away the brand Kim Cane’s tits had seared into her mind, “Your tits are amazing, Cam.”

“It’s Kim!” Kim shouted shrilly, her voice raw enough that it broke just as her lips made the sound of the I.

Mandy nodded mindlessly, babbling out, “Your Kims are amazing, Cam.”

Billy Hargrove laughed at her words, smothering his laugh into his arm as he wiped the sweat off his face. 

“Mandy!” Kim cried out pitifully, reaching up to cover her chest where Hargrove’s hand moved from, “Shut up and get out!”

“Kimmy!” A voice shouted from behind her, and it ripped a terrified shriek from Mandy’s lungs as she jolted, her shoulders jumping to her ears. Mandy briefly realized she wasn’t alone in her scream when she was done, and Kim was still going.

“What the hell are you doing out of your room, Joshua?!” Kim squeaked, slamming her torso down into Hargrove’s chest and trying to hide as much of herself from the little boy’s gaze by tugging some bundle of discarded clothing to her chest.

Mandy’s brows rose as she turned to look down at the little boy, talking to him in a condescending baby voice, “Is that your name? Joshua, huh? You kinda look like one, actually. That’s a nice name, _Jo-shu-a_.”

Joshua mostly ignored Mandy, only giving her a brief, irritated glance, “Kimmy! Where have you been?! Someone ate Freddy, and this dumbo just left me!”

“Oh, my God,” Mandy gasped, dropping the voice as she bent over to glare at the little boy “Liar! You ran away!”

“I was right in front of you!” The boy shouted up at Mandy, and she paused, wide-eyed as she thought back on if she ever checked along the floor. Holy shit, had she just sprinted passed him in her hurry? No way. She refused to believe it, but also… she couldn’t remember checking right in front of her what with the pot in her arms and everything. Shit. She might have been an actual idiot.

“How did you get out of your room?!” Kim shouted in complete bewilderment, “You’re only four! There’s no way you got out by yourself!”

Mandy rose her brows down at the child, “Are you really four? You seem kinda small for being four years old, Kid. Have you been drinking your milk and eating your greens? Also, where’s your other ugly-ass fuckin’ goldfish that I saved? The one with the big ole eyes?”

“Don’t curse at him, he’s four!” Kim shouted, and Mandy rolled her eyes.

“Fuck,” Mandy annunciated pointedly, smirking down at the little boy, who gave her a miserable look in reply.

“Mercury is in her fishbowl,” The little boy announced to Mandy with a dull look in his eye, before turning to his older sister, “Kimmy! What are you doing down here? I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

“Yeah, Kimmy,” Mandy piled on, eyeing her knowingly, “What are you doing down here?”

“Ugh! Get out, Mueller!” Kim shouted, pointing a finger towards the door, “Just get lost, you pest!”

“Okay, but what about the kid?” Mandy jerked a thumb down to the child below her, “Are you just gonna boink with him in the room? That’s sick, Cam, you should be institutionalized. I expected more from you, honestl—“

“Mandy, ugh! God, just leave!” Kim groaned, running a hand down her face as she looked down at Billy beneath her, “Tell her to leave, Billy, please!”

“Hey, Queenie,” Billy began, licking his lips as he looked up at her from his awkward angle sprawled out before her, rasping out lowly, “Get lost if you’re not gonna join in.”

“Billy!” Kim screamed at him indignantly, slapping him in the arm.

He merely chuckled, wincing from her strike before asking innocently, “What? I told her to get lost!”

Joshua looked up at Mandy, tugging on the leg of her jeans, and Mandy instinctively tried shaking him off with a little kick, “What are they doing?”

“Ugh, the devil’s dance, little dude,” Mandy announced dryly, as she leaned down to pick him up around the waist with both arms, hefting him against her stomach and letting his limbs dangle before her, “You should ask your Mommy and Daddy all about what you saw tonight.”

“Why?” The boy looked up at her unknowingly, “Why can’t Kimmy tell me?”

“Kimmy?” Mandy snorted as she looked to the two teens on the car, smirking devilishly as she began marching off towards the door, “More like Cummy! Ha! I kill myself! Nice oh-face, Cumberly! Bye now! I’m taking the stupid baby with me!”

She kicked the door shut with a slam just as Kim Cane shouted admonishingly, “Mandy!”

On the other side of the door, Mandy heard Billy Hargrove’s bellowing laughter, followed by an echoing slap.

* * *

“I have to pee,” Joshua announced unceremoniously, and Mandy looked to him from her position on his little racecar bed, sprawled out on her stomach with most her legs hanging off the edge as she flipped through a magazine lazily.

“Okay, this is your house, Dude,” Mandy replied drolly, shoving him off the bed and towards the door of his space-man themed bedroom, “Good luck out there, Buddy.”

The little boy merely turned to her disbelievingly, before he proclaimed in his baby voice, “I need help!”

Mandy shot him a cutting look, “You can’t pee by yourself!? You can walk, that’s total bullshit!”

“I need someone there so I don’t make a mess! Daddy usually helps me!” Mandy gave him a dirty look. Right, he was a gross little boy. They had disobedient little worms for genitalia. He was bound to piss everywhere if he didn’t have good aim. Someone help her.

“Well, only I’m here! And I’m not helping you, so that’s that!” Mandy exclaimed in reply, waving her arms around.

“Please!” The boy whined, crossing his legs and dancing a little on spot, “Miss Mandy! I really need to pee-pee!”

Kids were so fucking awful and disgusting!! Mandy hated them!!! In her frustration, Mandy threw the magazine across the room, watching it as it smacked against the fish tank against the wall, sending the little bowl wobbling in place. Mercury, a googly-eyed, silver and orange fish, startled in the bowl, bonking into the glass and thrashing in a full circle, winding belly-up before she righted herself again. 

Mandy jumped to her feet, dragging herself across the room as she announced, “Fine! C’mon, let’s go, you little asshole! Two-four! Hut-two! Or whatever! Move out! Let’s pee!”

Joshua jumped in place, scurrying out of the room before Mandy and making his way to the bathroom. He swung open the door, coming across a couple in the throes of their passion, the boy making a horrific grunting sound that had Mandy’s face screwing up as she closed the door again from over Josh’s head. The little boy turned to her with a look of pure repulsion that Mandy felt in her soul.

“Forget what you just saw, Kid. You got another bathroom in this house?” Mandy leaned down to ask him, and he nodded.

“In Mommy and Daddy’s room,” The little boy announced. It must have been a master bath, and Mandy looked down the hall to the room that lied at the end of hall. She loped down the hall, grabbing the little boy by the collar of his flannel pajamas and dragging him along after her, regardless of his complaints of discomfort. When she reached the room, she kicked open the door, feeling like Jackie fucking Chan and scaring a couple that was making out right out of the king-sized bed.

“Beat it, you sweaty whores!” Mandy bellowed as the two began stuffing limbs back into their cloth holes while stumbling toward the door, watching her with wide eyes and red faces the whole way. Mandy rolled her eyes as she marched to the bathroom door that was left ajar, tugging Joshua to her wing and nudging the door open with the toe of her boot to come across another group of people.

“Barker! Just barf, man!” A nameless boy barked to TJ Barker as he cried on the bathroom floor, clutching the side of the toilet, “Just do it!”

“I feel it!” Barker wailed, “It’s fighting me, man! It’s moving around in there, and it’s trying to fight its way out!”

“There’s just no way!” The third boy, who sported a thick pair of glasses, exclaimed, “It’s impossible for it to still be alive!”

“What the fuck is going on in here?” Mandy demanded coldly, Joshua huddling behind her leg and grabbing at her bootcut jeans.

All three boys turned their gazes to her, before Barker was belching loudly and groaning as he hung his head over the toilet. Mandy screwed up her face in disgust.

“Someone bet TJ that he couldn’t swallow a fish alive,” One boy inputed, while the boy with glasses scoffed.

“And now he thinks it’s alive in there, kicking around, which is impossible—it’s dead,” The boy rolled his eyes, and Joshua promptly started wailing in horrified grief at the information that was just given to him. Mandy let out a frustrated growl, her whole body running hot with her vexation.

“God, you’re all so stupid! Get out of here, you greasy asswipes!” She roared, pushing one boy out, the other following without her help, looking completely off-put by her explosive anger. She grabbed Barker by his ankles when she knew she wouldn’t be able to haul him up, him belching and muttering incoherently all the way. She dragged him over the bathroom threshold, his head bumping over the door jam, and making him cry out and dry heave once, and then twice, before he projectile-vomitted straight across the room and into a wedding portrait that was decades old. Mandy screamed in horror, covering her mouth with disgust, before Joshua exclaimed through his sniffles and caught her attention.

“Freddy!?!” The little boy cried out, pointing to the bright red, foamy barf on the floor and the small fish that was flopping around in the mess, before running over and dropping into the puddle of puke and scooping out the fish. Mandy gagged as she watched him storm back into the bathroom and turn on the tub, his vomit-coated feet slapping the whole way and leaving little neon footprints in his wake. Her eyes watered as her face screwed up in revulsion.

“I told you guys! It was ripping its way out of me, like in Alien!” Barker exclaimed, suddenly coherent and no longer wailing, and Mandy dry-heaved a little in response.

The boy with the thick, black glasses gaped in reply, while the third nameless boy announced vacantly, “Holy shit.”

“Oh, my God,” Mandy cried a little, putting her hands over her mouth and trying to stop herself from sobbing, “Oh, my actual fucking God! It was alive! Inside you!!”

“What is going on in here?!” Kim Cane shouted from the doorway, and Mandy gave a horrified wail at seeing her small blonde form in the doorway. Just hearing the question had Mandy’s mind reliving the last five revolting minutes, and it was like a slow-mo replay of the downward spiral that was her night out.

“Cam, the fish! The other fish was inside him! And—and, Josh! He—Blegh!“ Mandy paused, gagging a little, before covering her mouth with the back of her hand and looking to Kim with knitted brows as she announced, “I think I’m gonna be sick!”

Mandy pushed passed Kim Cane in the doorway, toeing passed her as she fled the room, Billy Hargrove looking to her with wide eyes as she wove around him. He tried grabbing at her elbow, and she shook him off without much thought, too traumatized to even look his way and tell him to fuck off. 

She stumbled to the other bathroom down the hall, pushing her way into the room and shoving passed the couple from earlier to drop to her knees and promptly vomit into the toilet. The sounds of her retching had both teens jerking away from each other.

“Ugh, you’re disgusting Mueller!” The girl screamed at her, while the boy shouted, “Can’t you see we’re busy!?”

Mandy merely heaved up more of her stomach’s contents in a wordless reply, her hair forming a curtain around her face to shield her from the world. She whined, looking down into the toilet with tears running freely down her cheeks. Ugh, she should have never come out tonight. It was the worst night of her life. She was in the middle of hacking pathetically and spitting out the taste of puke when her hair was pushed from the line of fire of her mouth, a hand carding her locks back from her face. 

She didn’t need to look to know who it was, for she could feel his terrible mind right beside her. 

“Did you drink too much or what?” He asked quietly, his voice a murmur, and Mandy gave a pained sob in reply, looking directly down at the amber liquid she threw up.

“Kids are disgusting,” She announced, sniffling and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, “A-and so are boys. I can’t—I can’t even tell you what I just saw. I’ll puke again.”

Hargrove simply exhaled sharply through his nose in amusement, and Mandy turned her wretched expression onto him to find him smiling his annoying golden-boy smile at her.

“Tell me you’re kidding,” He snorted as he caught her gaze. 

Mandy shook her head as she sat back on her heels, “He barfed. Everywhere. And the kid. Oh, my God. And the fish! TJ threw up a whole, live fish! It was just—ugh! I can’t! You don’t want to know.”

“The kid’s fish?” Billy asked, “How the hell do you get yourself into this shit, anyway?”

Mandy gave a miserable hiccup in reply, “I don’t know! I was taking a nap! And then Robbie was kicking me out of the George Michael shrine and the kid was shouting at me! _Everyone_ was yelling at me!! I panicked!”

Billy rose his brows, leaning over her to close the toilet and flush it before grabbing some toilet paper and handing it to her, “The George Michael shrine?” 

Mandy wiped at her mouth with a disgusted expression on her face as she whimpered weakly under her breath, “I don’t know! This feels like a nightmare! Am I in Hell?!”

“Wait,” Billy gave paused, squinting for a moment as he thought, “Did you say you were taking a nap?”

Mandy looked to him with dead-eyed expression as she replied very seriously, “I didn’t mean to, okay? It’s just—Hargrove, the bed was so amazing. It was a spiritual experience, I swear to God.”

“You were sleeping in—“ Billy sighed to himself, rolling his eyes, “You were the person in Kim’s room. No wonder she was so pissed about the bed thing.”

“If that was Cam’s bed there’s no wonder why she’s in such a great goddamn mood all the time,” Mandy announced dryly, crumpling up the toilet paper and tossing it into the trash bin, “Her bed’s amazing. Lucky bitch, does she even know? So ungrateful.”

Hargrove merely smiled at her, letting his hand fall from the side of her head, “Her name’s Kim.”

Mandy scrunched her face up in reply, “You still smell like Cumberly’s pussy, Hargrove, don’t even try it with me right now. I’ll ralph right in your face.” 

He merely laughed at her, looking cocky and devilish as he replied, “You should’ve joined us.”

“You really are gross,” Mandy announced, groaning and hanging her head as she muttered, “So gross, all the time.”

He smiled in her direction, running his hand through her hair again as he moved it away from her face. His mind wasn’t roaring like it usually did, but instead he was riding a post-coital wave of strangely hazy quietness. His emotions were fuzzy and warm, and his blood was molten lava in his veins—slow, and warm, and caramel. But then, deep down inside his rotten little mind, where the wolf cries echoed, and the wind howled in the cavernous depths, and the darkness shrouded the vast, fathomless abyss, she heard the gentle call: _She’s so perfect. Soft all over and mean as hell. Want her so bad. Want to kiss her breathless and taste her as she cums for me. God, I want her. Even puking she’s still the prettiest thing around._

Mandy flushed despite herself at hearing his mind and feeling the fuzzy warmth thrumming through him. Her core clenched in reply to his thoughts, and she tore her head from his tender petting with a disconcerted frown. She didn’t feel that, she reminded herself. She was just disgusted beyond belief and puking, for fuck’s sake. She didn’t lust for anything like that. And she certainly did not think like that. Billy Hargrove just had sex with another girl, and was still fucking daydreaming about having her! What the fuck was wrong with him?!

Mandy pushed herself onto her legs to stand, eyeing him detestably, “So majorly gross!! Ugh!”

She stomped her foot once as she huffed before tromping right over Hargrove’s sprawled out form on the ground, leaving him smirking to himself and cocking his head in her direction as he watched her walk off, eyes lingering on the sway of her hips. 

_Always so cold,_ his mind crooned fiendishly, _and always has me so hot for her when she walks away._

Ugh, he was such a pig! Mandy wished she would have barfed right in his dumb face. It would have only been what he deserved for eye-fucking her while she puked her brains out.


	12. Come Out and Play, Bitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fun is only beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chap was kinda late lol sorry, guys! I've had a rough last few days lmao and I'm feeling p haggard rn buT AT LEAST I'M POSTING, RIGHT??
> 
> as usual, I love you all, you're my life, my love, my inspiration, and I'm so honored and flattered by your kind words! <3!!
> 
> p.s. if I don't reply to yall in the next few days its b/c I lost my laptop charger lmao I'm a FUCKEN MESS i'm so sorry i constantly embody such GR8 SHAME
> 
> also, if there's any mistakes, sorry kiddos I'm living on 40% power on my laptop and every time i open an application it ticks down like a countdown on a fuckin bomb ;___; my heart cannot bare the stress of this situation lmao

Mandy Mueller was a total idiot.

Hiding her face in her hands, she stormed off from Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers, completely mortified by how their conversation had just went. Barbara Holland’s funeral had just taken place the day before, and the news covered it, telling the world of the tragic circumstances of her mysterious disappearance. Mandy had felt bad—she had remembered the fresh wretched grief and loathing she felt from Wheeler, and had wished, somewhere deep down, to be able to spare her from the suffering of loss and the echoing hollowness that came after. Mandy had never felt it herself—hadn’t ever loved in a way that would warrant her to ever feel loss—but she had seen it time and time again in the heads all around her, and Nancy Wheeler may have been a square, but she deserved better. 

But it turned out that even with the best intentions, Mandy Mueller was still a bitch. A big ole whopper of a bitch.

Mandy had approached her with a mask of trained sympathy, “Hey, Nancy. I just wanted to say sorry for your loss. I know Barbara Howard was your best friend. It must be tough.”

Nancy’s brows pinched together pitifully, “Holland.”

“Huh?” Mandy made a sound of confusion, her sympathetic expression falling from her visage as Jonathan stepped forward, putting a hand on Nancy’s shoulder to comfort her.

“Her last name was Holland,” Jonathan Byers clarified, his face somber and his lips downturned. 

Mandy couldn’t stop the croak that left her at his words, her complexion taking on an ashen hue, “Oh. Uh, right, sorry again.”

And then she was gone. She turned on her heel, nearly sprinting away from the train wreck of a conversation she just had. She had no words for what just happened. The one time she actually didn’t want to be an insensitive bitch, she just had to fuck herself! It was so unfair! Mandy kind of felt nauseated, and also maybe like she should just run back to her car and skip the rest of the school day. She hadn’t ever felt so rotten in her life.

“Hey, Mandy,” A voice called as she stormed down another hallway, hunched in on herself and hiding her face from view. Mandy let out a little squeak at the voice, jolting upright to spy Kim Cane in the middle of her friend group, eyes trained on her.

“Uh, I don’t have time right now, Cam,” Mandy spat in her direction distractedly, continuing down her designated path, and the girl in question scoffed.

“It’s Kimberly, for the last time, Bitch!” Kim erupted as Mandy passed her, and Mandy spun on her heel, shrugging to the girl sheepishly.

“Last I heard it was Cumberly,” Mandy replied flippantly, brows raising as she walked backwards, facing the girl, but still not stopping from her trek to where she was going, “At least that’s what all of Hargrove’s friends are saying. Bye! See ya later, Sweetie!”

“You’re such a bitch, Mueller!” Kim shouted at her as Mandy turned back around and disappeared around the corner, agreeing with her wordlessly. 

Yep, Mandy Mueller was such a total bitch, and she wouldn’t even try to deny it.

* * *

 

_“Yeah, when you call my name, I salivate like a Pavlov dog, Yeah, when you lay me out, my heart beats like a big bass drum, alright!”_ Mandy sat in her car during her free period, playing a new tape from Hargrove and listening it with barely there interest. She couldn’t even say what the song was, she just knew it sounded like The Rolling Stones and had a nice, kicky beat. She gnawed on the inside of her lip, thinking about Nancy Wheeler’s pinched expression as she repeated the last name of her recently deceased best friend. Something about it just… haunted her.

Her memories pushed forward the night Eleven had showed her Mike Wheeler and the gross, awful feeling she experienced when she saw the two look unflinchingly into each other’s eyes. The look on Nancy’s face brought up the same feelings, and Mandy couldn’t make sense of it. Human connection was so odd. People missed, and wanted, and loved, and Mandy didn’t—she was a head in the clouds and a hollow heart that could only echo what it heard in others. She didn’t feel connected to anything, really—except for maybe Eleven. But even that was… _tepid._ If Eleven suddenly disappeared, Mandy wouldn’t feel the loss—not like the kind that Nancy Wheeler felt. The girl would be gone, and Mandy would simply trudge on with the banal life she led. 

It made her suspect something was wrong with her. Well, besides the obvious, anyway. She wondered if it was the operation—the big whirring pointy thing stabbing into her cranium—that did it, but she couldn’t seem to remember a time when she ever lost anything before that. Maybe she was just too young to remember. Or maybe she really was heartless all along. The longer she thought about it, the more she thought that it didn’t matter anyway. She told herself that—it didn’t matter either way. Whether she was heartless or disconnected or just too narcissistic to care about anyone else—it didn’t really matter at the end of the day. Grief and love seemed so completely annoying and miserable, anyway, she decided with finality.

“Bitch,” A crystal clear voice broke her out of her reverie, and Mandy blinked, trying to draw her mind back to earth.

Mandy turned to look at her visitor, spotting the bashful Jonathan Byers of all people, before spitting out an acerbic, “Excuse me?”

Byers looked a little sheepish as he stammered out his reply, “R-right, sorry. I wasn’t calling you a bitch or anything. It’s just, the song you’re listening to? It’s The Stones, right? I know it. It’s a good song.”

Mandy blinked owlishly up at him from the driver’s seat of the car, “What?”

“The song is Bitch, by The Rolling Stones,” Byers smiled awkwardly, “Sorry, I feel like I’m getting off track. I didn’t—well, I just wanted to—I don’t know, talk to you. About Nancy, I guess.”

Mandy’s brows rose at his words, “Wait, the song is titled Bitch? Ugh! What a piece of work! I really don’t need this today!”

“Oh—uh, sorry,” Byers put his hands in his pockets as Mandy silently cursed Billy Hargrove’s entire existence, “I can—uh, I can just go, if you want.”

“No! Not you, Dumbass!” Mandy yelled at him lazily, waving a single arm out of her open window, “You’re fine! Ugh, never mind! What did you even want to talk about, anyway?”

“Just,” Jonathan Byers shifted a little on his feet, squinting his eyes across the parking lot to the other kids loitering before turning his gaze back onto Mandy, “Do you think you can—I don’t know—go easy on Nancy for a little bit?”

Mandy gaped momentarily, staring up at him disbelievingly, “Uh, excuse me?”

“It’s just, y’know, what with Barb and everything, she’s having a hard time,” Byers explained quietly, and Mandy snapped her jaw shut so loud her teeth clacked together, “And y’know, I know you think it’s funny and everything—the name thing. But she’s having a hard time right now.”

Um, did Jonathan Byers think Mandy was being funny when she got Barb Holland’s name wrong? Mandy couldn’t decide if that was worse than actually not knowing the girl’s name, and stared wide-eyed up at Byers’ uneasy frame. 

“Uh,” Mandy began, having trouble finding a good response to that as the inside of her brain was shouting deplorable things to her, “Right. Sorry. I—uh…”

She didn’t fucking know what she even wanted to say. She was absolutely gobsmacked.

“I’d really appreciate it,” Byers nodded, and Mandy merely nodded back hollowly, “You’re being really cool about it, Mandy, thanks. Nice music choice, by the way.”

And then he was off, and Mandy leaned out of her car window to eyeball him bewilderedly, hair dangling sideways as she stuck her neck out of the window and watched him walk across the parking lot, eyes on the ground and hands in his pockets. Okay, Mandy’s mind creaked out woodenly, what the fuck was that? She was so at a loss for what was happening.

Jonathan Byers thought Mandy had mocked a dead girl’s memory by purposely misnaming her, and then just asked her nicely to take it easy with all the off-colored jokes. And then said he liked her music and walked off like it wasn’t the most bizarre thing Mandy had ever experienced. He didn’t even threaten bodily harm, and Mandy’s mind was in a confused haze for most of the rest of the day over the peculiarity of the entire event.

By the time she had entered one of her last classes of the day, dazedly wandering in and settling her books on her desk, even Billy Hargrove’s annoying voice wasn’t enough to snap her out of it.

“What’s with the look?” He asked, peering over her shoulder from his seat behind her, close enough to her ear that his exhale set some of her smaller hairs fluttering against her temples. 

Mandy robotically turned on spot, looking to him with a thoughtful expression, “I’m a bitch, right?”

Hargrove’s expression pulled up into one of anticipation, and Mandy realized what she just said and who she just said it to. 

Billy Hargrove’s mind was blaring—bells tolling and sirens flashing colors behind his eyelids like fireworks lighting up the night sky. He thought she was actually approaching him about the tape he left her. What a chump, honestly. Even with all the excitement rebounding inside him, the clever part of him was still suspicious. He wasn’t ready to give himself up yet. The ruse would be over when she called him on it, he reminded himself. Or just called him up and gave him a day and time to pick her up. 

“Yeah,” Hargrove nodded along with her words, and Mandy was almost a little offended by how quickly he said it until she remembered he was so keen because of the tape. Right, ugh.

“Jesus,” Mandy muttered without thought, face scrunching up, “You could have at least paused a little for my own peace of mind. You didn’t even hesitate.”

Hargrove gave a toothy grin in reply, “Well, you asked for it, Queenie.”

“Anyway,” Mandy gave a roll of her eyes as she sighed, “So, I’m a bitch—“

“Right, we just covered that,” Hargrove inputted unhelpfully, smirking at the unimpressed look she shot him.

“And… like,” Mandy looked around helplessly, trying to avoid his gaze, “I don’t know. Did you hear about Barbara Holland?”

Billy rose his brows, “The girl who died from the government experiments, or whatever?”

“Yeah,” Mandy confirmed, “Well, I might have accidentally gotten her name wrong. Like, not as a joke.”

“Okay,” Hargrove gave her a fully confused look, and Mandy rolled her eyes as he shrugged, “And?”

“Well, I don’t know! I feel bad about it!” Mandy announced, gesticulating around her, “She’s dead, Hargrove. As in, they buried her and now she’s in the ground rotting, and I couldn’t even remember her fucking name! I’ve been going to school with her for, like, three years or whatever! I’m starting to think I’m self-centered!”

Billy gaped at her proclamation, giving a bark of disbelieving laughter, “Tell me you’re kidding me! You’re just now starting to think you’re self-centered? As in, it just fucking occurred to you?!”

“Don’t laugh!” Mandy demanded in a hiss as his booming voice caught the attention of their classmates around them, “Ugh! Why am I even entertaining you right now?! You’re infuriating!”

“I actually thought something interesting happened!” Hargrove announced, brows pulled up, “The look on your face actually looked like human emotion for a second!”

Mandy merely pouted in his direction, giving a roll of her eyes as she turned back around in her seat, “You piss me off so much. I can’t believe I thought I could have an actual conversation with you.”

Hargrove’s head was flashing images to her, all the strange quirks of her facial expressions and the way her lips pulled when she said his name, and Mandy leaned forward on her elbows miserably to try and give herself space from his mind. She could hear it calling to her— _Mandy, Mandy, Mandy, tell me you’re playing. Say it ain’t so, Baby. Say you aren’t going soft. Say that you liked my fucking tape. Just admit you want me. At least look twice. God, Queenie, it was a joke. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. Well, maybe I did, but c’mon, I can’t get a single thing out of you otherwise. Just give me something, Baby. I’ll be sweeter next time._

Mandy scowled up at the black board, hunching her shoulders just slightly as she sighed. Fucking Hargrove. His entire consciousness had her head roaring like an angry tiger—gone was the fuzzy confusion Byers had set into her, and gone was her drifting mind. Billy Hargrove filled her head with cement and dropped her into the goddamn ocean, just to let her sink to the bottom. Fucking prick. Even being in love with her he was a total douche to her. It really pissed her off, especially because even with girls he didn’t like all that much he could muster up enough kindness to at least lie to them. It was all so unfair! The world just loved to shit on her, and it fucking sucked.

Hargrove’s annoying little brain was still pining and whining over her, and Mandy had enough. She whipped around in her seat, long blonde hair whacking him in the face, if his slight sputter was anything to go by, and looked him right in the eye as she announced, “Oh, by the way—Cam yelled at me earlier, so I told her you went around calling her Cumberly with all your gross jock buddies. Good luck getting out of that one, Hargrove.”

He opened his mouth to reply, eyes wider than anything Mandy had ever seen from him as he rose his brows, before she was turning in seat again to ignore him. He made a strangled sound of distress for a moment, before he was leaning into his desk and speaking lowly to the side of her head, “It was ‘Cummy’, actually.”

Mandy cocked her head with a sigh to eyeball him suspiciously out of the corner of her eye, “What?”

His mischievous smile he had settled on her grew wider, blossoming across his visage and lighting up his face like an early morning sunrise, and Mandy’s brows pulled together as he reiterated, “I went around calling her Cummy. Everyone thought it was hilarious.”

Mandy gave pause, before scoffing with indignation and spinning around in her seat again, “You can’t just fuck a girl, and then make fun of her two days later, Hargrove! It’s low rent!”

Mandy belatedly realized their faces were mere inches from each other, momentarily crossing her eyes when she tried to focus on Hargrove’s face. The boy in question merely scooted further up on his desktop, leaning his weight forward onto his elbows, licking his lips as his eyes trailed down the center of her face to settle on her lips briefly, before glancing back up to her eyes from under his thick lashes. Mandy jerked her face away from his. What a whore, Mandy thought bitterly, Hargrove just couldn’t keep it together for one damn second. 

“I think I already did, Queenie,” Hargrove announced, “And I don’t really think anyone could have stopped me.”

Mandy gave him a frosty look, “You really are a pig, Hargrove. That girl deserves better.”

“That’s big talk, Queenie,” Hargrove shrugged nonchalantly as his brows jumped on his face, “From the girl who called her that in the first place.”

“Yeah, I get it! We already covered I’m a bitch, Billy,” Mandy gesticulated passionately, waving her arms around as she jerked away from his face, “But I didn’t stick my dirty dick in Cumberly, did I? I have a right to be a bitch to her, ‘cause I never pretended to like her for pussy! I never pretended to like her at all!!”

Hargrove blinked at her momentarily, before slowly slinking back into his seat and crossing his arms as he tapped the floor with the toe of his shoe, seeming to think. His mind was a knotted chain, gritty and disjointed as it pulled free his next words, “I never _pretended_ to like Kim.”

Liar. Mandy couldn’t tell if it was her own mind thinking that or his, but she heard it. Stark, cold, and ringing too fucking true. 

Mandy’s lips parted to released a breathy, disbelieving laugh as she rolled her eyes, “You’re so full of shit, Hargrove. It just kills me, y’know?”

Hargrove gave her a look that was both angry and amused. She had got him, and he didn’t have anything to defend himself with. Nothing that wouldn’t get him in trouble in some way, anyway. _Figures,_ his mind hissed out, _The one girl I want is the only one with enough fucking balls to tell me all about how fucked up I am. She really is a bitch. I fucking love it. Even when she’s angry, she makes my name sound so good—_

Mandy couldn’t believe him! Now was not the time to fixate on the way she said his name! Or fantasize over the look and feel of her lips! Or any of the other gross things his mind was doing! He was missing the entire point! He jerked around girls. He played them. Said whatever he thought would reel them in, and then he did shit like call them names! Like none of it mattered! And then he walked around thinking he was hot shit, when he wasn’t. Not even close. Billy Hargrove wasn’t shit. He drove an ugly blue Camaro and wore a cheap Casio watch— _he was not shit._ He was just a pig. Mandy really fucking despised him.

Mandy slapped the top of the back of her chair frustratedly as she tore her gaze from his. Hargrove gave a toothy grin in reply.

“Ugh! You’re just so grody! I don’t know why I bother!” Mandy proclaimed loud enough for the rest of the class to hear, before swiveling back into her desk and decidedly ignoring him and his evil, rotten mind for the rest of the school day.

* * *

 

Billy Hargrove dumped Kim Cane like a hot fucking coal, and the whole school knew about it. Half of the female population giggled when he walked by, while the other half eyed him with barely contained contempt. He didn’t care either way. Only the ugly bitches had a problem with him, anyway. 

“Asshole!” A girl shouted at him as he walked to his locker, and Billy rose his brows in her direction curiously, only for her flip him off as she left the corridor. At the end of the hall, Kimberly Cane stood with another one of her friends, waiting for the girl with a victorious smirk on her face. Billy rolled his eyes.

“Heifers!” He yelled down the hall, and all three gasped, gaping with hanging jaws, before stomping off in a huff, leaving him alone in the hallway once more. Billy gave a tight, sarcastic smile as he watched them disappear from sight. Fucking bitches, man. If Kim Cane was stupid enough to put out without a date, that wasn’t his fault. She could cry boo-fucking-hoo all she wanted, but she had known from the get-go that she wasn’t a permanent fixture. It wasn’t his fault she got too comfortable.

He swung open his locker distractedly, tossing his textbooks inside with a great clatter, before slamming it shut. Turning on the spot, his foot managed to kick something straight across the hall, catching his attention as the little piece of plastic bumped into the opposing wall and slid to a stop a few yards away. 

No way, was all he could think. No fucking way was that what he thought it was. His body couldn’t decide if it wanted to burst into action or freeze on the spot, and Billy found himself looking both directions down the hall in his bafflement. He tugged at his jacket collar, righting it on his shoulders as he loped over to it suspiciously. When he reached it, he stared down at the cassette with narrowed eyes, the toes of his black boots on either side of it.

It was small, and had nothing on it. No phone number, or name, or even a label, and Billy found himself licking his lips before he crouched down and snagged it. He flipped it over, finding on the opposing side a quickly scrawled: _“Why don’t you try to play me?”_ He knew that writing—had watched her time and time again trudge miserably up to the blackboard during math and scribble that same writing with a bored look on her face. Mandy _fucking_ Mueller gave him a tape. 

She didn’t call him, or tell him to fuck off right to his face, but she gave him a cassette tape. The girl had figured it out, and had no doubts as to who was sending her the tapes. Billy’s nerves were shot—every nerve-ending in him was alight like a string of Christmas lights. He was on fucking fire at the thought. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to whack her across the ass for waiting so damn long or kiss her senseless now that she had finally decided to play along.

Mandy Mueller, his mind called, you little fucking bitch.

* * *

 

“I need your walkman,” Billy announced once Maxine reached the car, promptly flicking his cigarette away and setting his hand out expectantly, “Give it to me.”

The girl he was speaking to merely scrunched up her face, “Why?”

“Because, Maxine,” Billy drawled out adenoidally, and Maxine looked at him peculiarly, her headphones hanging around her neck, “Now, give it over.”

She began moving them from around her neck, before pausing, “You’re not gonna, like… break it? Are you?”

Billy gave an irritated huff, “No, Dipshit! I need to use it! Now!”

He waved his open hand around, flexing his fingers until Max finally handed him the little plastic device. He ejected the tape inside, shoving it in her direction before putting his tape in and unwinding the headphone wires with minimal destruction. He slipped them on his ears with furrowed brows, frowning all the while, and Max looked up at him expectantly.

“Uh, what are you listening to?” She asked uncomfortably, raising her brows at him, and Billy looked down to her with a disgruntled expression.

“Nothing! Now get in the car,” He waved her off, and Max narrowed her eyes in his direction.

“It doesn’t seem like nothing,” She announced smartly as she rounded the car to the passenger door at a snail’s pace, and Billy gave her a dirty look to shut her up that only managed to get an even more annoying look out of her. 

When the song began, Billy swore he was ready to break something—

_“Body, body, want to feel my body, Baby? Such a thrill, my body, Baby!”_ The Village People played into his ears, and he hung his head, pinching his lips together. Macho Man. Mandy Mueller really thought she was a comedian. Why had he ever thought she was going to give him something good? A small part of him clung to the hope that there was something else on the tape, and he pressed the button down to fast forward through the tape, trying to get to the end of the song.

When Macho Man by The Village People had finished playing, the next song began like a roll of thunder. Max peered over the top of the car, eyes narrowed in suspicion as Billy tapped his foot anxiously. Billy didn’t really need to listen to the song, he already recognized it just by the opening chords, but he still let it play.

_“If you think I'll sit around while you chip away my brain, listen I ain't foolin' and you'd better think again, Out there is a fortune waiting to be had, if you think I'll let it go you're mad, You've got another thing comin’—“_ He hadn’t expected to hear Judas Priest of all things on a cassette tape from Mueller, but hearing the song made sense. 

Macho Man, You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’. 

Billy ripped the headphones off his head, tossing them into the open window of the car, shifting on his feet listlessly as his eyes scanned the parking lot. He just wanted to see her, catch her eye. Mandy Mueller didn’t get to drop a tape into his locker and then disappear like a damn ghost. He needed to see the look on her face—would she be cocky and annoying about it? Or would she simply pretend like she never left it? Billy was dying to find out. How was she trying to play the game? He really needed to know. It was eating him up inside.

“Hey!” Max exclaimed as the walkman was tossed into the open window, and Billy ground his teeth together at her grating voice. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, turning on spot to find Mueller’s parking spot already empty with a small amount of irritation. 

Sneaky little bitch took off before he’d be able to get to her. He released a sharp puff of air out of his nostrils. She drove him fucking crazy sometimes.

“Shut up!” Billy barked as he swung his door open and hopped into the driver’s seat. Max sat in the passenger’s seat with a frown, looking down at her walkman in her hands and checking it over for any damages with scrutinizing eyes. He sneered in her direction, releasing a long plume of smoke into her face when she eyed him hatefully. Maxine coughed at it, sputtering and waving the smoke from her face.

“Billy!” Max cried out pitifully as she hacked up a lung, “Blegh! Gross!”

Billy started the car and peeled out of the parking lot.

* * *

 

The party for the weekend was being held at King Steve Harrington’s house, and Billy knew he couldn’t miss it. The boy was on his last lap of high school, and Billy knew Harrington was going to be stepping it up a notch. He had lit a fire under Harrington, and now he was going to watch the boy hop fucking to it. Before his arrival, nobody could compete with Harrington, and it made him lazy. He was starting to slip, and now that Steve knew just how far, Billy didn’t plan on ever letting him forget it.

The stereo system blasted synth pop, which was alright, he guessed, and the open floor plan of the house had the music surrounding him from every direction. He kind of wished someone would change the song, already. Something harder, and maybe a little bit faster—just anything else, really. For some reason, he thought about Judas Priest, and then found himself wanting to see if Mandy Mueller even bothered to show up to Harrington’s party. The two were fighting again, and Billy had no fucking clue over what, but they were. It seemed to be routine. Mueller and Harrington were like two angry cats in a washer machine—constantly waving their claws at one another and going in circles. 

As if summoned by his thoughts alone, Mandy appeared before his eyes, wearing a short black skirt and a low cut, lacy top that he just spied from underneath her oversized denim jacket. His mouth watered, and he found himself licking his lips as she spun in a full circle while dancing with somebody, bopping her head and laughing at someone in the crowd. 

Billy immediately decided he was going to get her alone that night—even if she was going to scream at him the whole time, he wanted to have her alone to do it. 

She was grinning wickedly once the song ended, and waved herself away once she parted with whoever she was dancing with. Her jacket fell off one shoulder as she tossed her hair back from her face, shaking it out with a hand bedazzled with jewelry. She jangled all the way across the room, and his eyes followed her unblinkingly until she walked through another threshold and right out of sight. He looked around the room, eyes scouring the faces in the crowd for anything extraordinary and coming up empty, before following after her.

The room she walked into ended up being the garage, and it held an entire fleet of BMWs, and two sport cars he had only ever seen in magazines. It suddenly hit him how rich Steve Harrington really was at that moment. No wonder people worshipped him, regardless of how fucking goofy he was. It left a sour taste in Billy’s mouth. Rich kids got shit so much easier.

The group of teens in the garage were playing foosball and ping pong on opposite ends of the room, and Mueller was bent over an ice chest in the middle of it all, shuffling through its contents, her ass catching multiple sets of eyes as she shifted on her feet and cocked a hip. Billy couldn’t stop the slight twinge of jealousy that rocketed through him, and found himself unthinkingly marching towards her back, before pinching the underside of her ass as he reached her. She jolted with a squeak, kicking out behind her, and missing him completely as he strolled right around her left side when she turned over her opposite shoulder to shout at him. She did a full circle, her thigh-high suede boots clacking against the concrete floors, until she rounded on him, catching his smug expression.

“Funny seeing you here,” He greeted with a grin that had her pouting and crossing her arms.

“What are you doing here, Hargrove? You don’t even like Harrington,” Mandy announced coldly, seemingly already over the fact that he had just pinched her ass.

“Aw, c’mon, Queenie,” Billy began easily, before looking down into the ice chest and grabbing a beer out of it, “You know me, live and let live. I’m all about forgiveness.”

Mandy made a face, “Ugh, don’t bore me with the peace, love, kumbaya bullshit, Hargrove.”

Billy’s brows jumped on his face, his smile growing as he bit out sarcastically, “I also wanted to see what the big deal was about Harrington’s parties, and here we are. A total rager. No wonder they call him King.”

Mandy rolled her eyes, giving him a shrug as she looked around the room, “You won’t catch me calling him that, but whatever. It’s alright, I guess. I definitely didn’t expect you to be here.”

That caught his attention. Billy hadn’t thought she’d be here because she was locking horns with Harrington, and Mandy hadn’t expected him there either, under the assumption that he hated Steve Harrington just on principle alone. She only came because she assumed he wouldn’t be there, he deduced quickly. He wasn’t at all surprised. After she bailed early on Friday and left him the cassette, he assumed she would be trying to avoid him, but another question still stood. Just why the hell had she come to the party at all? He narrowed his eyes in her direction. She was awfully well-dressed, he thought. She must’ve been looking out for somebody in particular. That somebody not being him. He didn’t like that.

“Alright,” He cleared his throat, cracking open his beer and taking a long drink of it, “Enough about Harrington, now let’s see it.”

Mandy rose her brows at his words, pretty diamond eyes catching in the amber lighting and momentarily entrancing him, “See what?”

Billy blinked, stepping closer to her and squaring his shoulders as he took the hand holding his beer to use his index finger and push open her jacket and expose some of her short skirt and midriff top, “‘See what?’ She asks. You know, you’re really somethin’ else, Queenie. It’s cute how you like to play dumb with me. You know I mean the outfit, it’s quite a look.”

Mandy gave a sarcastic smile in return as she cocked her hip to elongate her curves for his eyes and replied in a nasally tone, “Oh, _thaaannks._ It’s Calvin Klein.”

“I would prefer it off,” Billy announced humorously, giving her a cheeky grin that had her rolling her eyes.

“Keep it up with the jokes,” Mandy declared dully, “It might just happen.”

“Oh-ho-ho,” Billy waggled his brows in reply, “She likes her men funny. Is that your type? I expected a longer check-list, Princess.”

“Well, I certainly can’t find any cute ones around here,” Mandy retorted without missing a blink, her expression vacant as she eyed his beer, and Billy grinned.

“Aren’t you lucky that I just got in then?” He replied, smiling as he watched her look off to the side of him.

“You’re not my type,” She said cooly, expression even as she turned her eyes on him before raising her brows very subtly as she continued, “Sorry, Hargrove, I know you thought it was gonna happen.”

It was probably the closest thing to rejection he had ever gotten from her, and it almost stung. Almost. It felt like it wasn’t just a joking little bit of ribbing—like she was actually trying to let him down easy without having to say it outright, and it made him feel a little bit wounded. He would have preferred some yelling or name calling, not a fucking ‘sorry’ and a constipated expression. It made him a little angry, and he wanted to rile her for no other reason than she looked her best when she was a little bit angry.

“Save the bullshit for some other guy,” He responded coarsely, “You and I both know you want me.”

Her brows rose, pinching together in the middle of her face as he pulled an indignant expression out of her, “Excuse me?!”

“You heard what I said,” He shrugged, taking a few more long gulps from the can before it was empty, and he was crushing it with his hand and tossing it to the ground.

“Yeah, I did,” Mandy nodded along with a frustrated expression, “I was just giving you a chance to take it back!”

“Now, Queenie,” Billy began, cocking his head as he stepped into her space, face looming above hers. She tilted her chin up in challenge, not looking even slightly cowed, and it made him want to plant one on her, “Why would I do that when we both know I’m right?”

“You think I want you?” Mandy reworded, looking around the room with a bewildered expression, before she settled her gaze onto him again, “ _Me?!_ Hargrove, I’ve got some bad news for you. If I wanted you, Honey, I would have had you already. You’re new and all alone, and I would have had you flat on your back the moment I saw you, if I _really_ wanted you.”

The words were said with such little theatrics compared to her usual fussy melodrama that they actually made him give pause, and he found himself looking into her eyes and imagining all the ways she would have made that happen. He, strangely, believed her. He actually really did. He heard all about her being stuck-up, and all about her being frigid, and all about her being a prissy virgin—but he believed her when she said she would have had him laid out. For as stuck-up she was, she did seem like the type to go after what she wanted. And if she gave him the time of day back when he first arrived in Hawkins, she probably would have been able to have her way with him—he would have been a willing participant. 

“New and all alone?” He parroted, cocking his head to eye her as he licked his lips, “Really now?”

She gave him a look that spoke so much louder than any words ever could—eyes shuttering just slightly and the corner of her lip jumping as she stared at him with her keen eyes. She cocked her head in reply, and he couldn’t stop thinking about how perfect the angle was for him to just dip in for a kiss and taste her finally. Her eyes darted to his lips briefly, and he knew she was thinking the exact same thing, because she pulled herself away just slightly, tilting her chin down. He groaned inwardly. Almost. It would have been perfect.

“Are you denying it? The first girl you messed around with was a total psycho,” Mandy announced as she placed her hands on her hips, “You walked right into a goddamn hornet’s nest with Radner.”

He breathed out a small laugh from his nose at her words, “And you got stung. Sucks, huh? That the real reason you’re pretending to not be into me? You scared another crazy girl’s gonna come along?”

The miserable expression on her face was enough to get a chuckle out of him, and she actually smirked a little in reply to his own amusement as she shook her head, “Have you met a girl around here who’s crazier than me?”

The sweet, wicked look on her face paired with her words had him ready to pounce on her. No, he wanted shout, not a single bitch in Hawkins was crazier than her—or prettier—or meaner—or sweeter at the worst times—and not even one could contend with her. He wouldn’t ever say it out loud. Not to her face, not to his own fucking reflection, and probably not even with a gun to his head, but god fucking damn it if it wasn’t the truest thing. He really wanted her. He really wanted her to want him back. That would have been fucking perfect.

He didn’t know how to reply. The truth was too honest, and he really didn’t want to lie. Not when the truth would have probably been better, and he would never give her the truth on that one. It would have made him look too soft. It would have had him giving up the game just before she even really started playing along. He wanted more from her before that. He wouldn’t be giving her shit until she gave him something good beforehand. He ended up tossing back his head and giving a roaring laugh that had her quirking her head and watching him knowingly—like she just knew he was keeping something from her. When he was finished, he made a show of wiping his face.

“Ah, you really are too much sometimes, Queenie,” He gave a sigh, and she narrowed her eyes at him just enough for him to suspect her of keeping some unspoken conjecture. She looked at him like she was waiting on him to make a move, and he realized, he was waiting to make a move. He had been waiting on any sign to move in on her, and every time everything was almost perfect, she was backing off, or pivoting out of his line of fire. It was a little bit bitter and a little bit sweet. He couldn’t decide if he liked this dance or not. It left him unsatisfied, but it fed another part of him that he never noticed was so starved for whatever his interactions with her gave him. He didn’t think he ever met someone who fed that quiet little part of him before.

“Oh, please, Goldilocks,” She smiled at him, her wicked little smile, “You and I both know I’m just right.”

If only she wasn’t so fucking right, Billy thought, he would have loved to grab her face and swallow her words. She was beautiful, and wild, and untamable. She was a red tempest—all bloody smiles and lightning strikes right to his gut. The rest of the world could bow for him all it wanted, and she’d still stand before him and scream to the heavens about how he’d never get her to take a fucking knee. Never, not once, not without some work, and even then, it still probably wouldn’t happen. It was a bitter truth than made him want her all the more. 

Oh, Mandy Mueller, if only you knew, his mind rang out as he leaned back from her and smirked in her direction. _If only you fucking knew._


	13. Trouble Comes in Twos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maxine Mayfield's evil stepbrother is acting weird, while her stupid friends are back to falling headfirst into trouble. Max really can't catch a break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, SO, I have been dying to post this chapter forever now b/c it is ALL MAX'S POV (!!!!!!). And Maxine is my lil vans-wearing, californian skate-baby, so I might be a little worried over butchering her character lol but I'M GONNA POST IT ANYWAY. I also had a segment of Billy's pov in this chap (for the sake of plot lol) and just moved it to the next one tbh b/c I wanted everything to be Max and The Boys™ and you all can just scratch your heads over the details until next chap when everything will be clarified. Look, lol, I'm sorry but this is for the sake of ART, okay??? I just want an all-Max moment lol
> 
> also, side note, my headcanon is that Max is a lil horror movie nerd so prepare yourselves for some References™ 
> 
> anyway, as per the usual, Kiddos - beyond here lies violence and misogyny and plot twists lmao you've been warned
> 
> and as always, I love you all with all my heart, and honestly, would probably not have gotten this far into the plot without your support ;__; I appreciate y'all so much I don't think you even know the half of it tbh <3!!

There weren’t many people who stood up to Max’s stepbrother, and didn’t end up pummeled.

Billy was quick to bite. He grated on people, bossed them around, and made crude jokes more often than not; and if anyone ever tried to give it back to him, he would snap. Billy shouldered his way through life. He pushed around the little man, and played every single thing to his advantage. He took, and took, and _took_ , and then when there was nothing left to pillage, he destroyed the husk of what was left. Billy was mean, pure and simple. He ruined everything just for the fun of it, like a little boy knocking over an anthill just to tell himself he was god to something. 

Billy was an evil boy who did everything possible to get the world to bend to his whims. He’d lie, and sneak, and yell, and break. He was a personal reminder to Max that the world was awful and unfair, and would always be with him around. Billy mastered every aspect of being an asshole—every subtle, shitty nuance—and Max resented just how good he was at it.

So, Max thought, it was a good thing that Mandy Mueller came along and gave him a taste of his own medicine.

Mandy Mueller might as well have been a myth when Max first heard of her. She was a public figure known for being popular, and pretty, and for driving a ridiculously expensive car. In Hawkins, she was at the top of the hierarchy, and Max realized that was a big deal, but she still hadn’t really cared either way. She hadn’t ever encountered the girl, and probably never would, so Max gave her very little thought. Until she heard about her getting hit by Amy Radner’s car, and then Max found herself stealthily watching all the girls walk into the high school, trying to guess which one was Mandy Mueller. It just sounded so unreal—a girl struck by a car, who got right back up swinging. Max was actually intrigued, but if anyone ever called her on it, she planned to actively lie.

Billy had been acting weird. Max assumed it was about the night she drugged him, but the more she found him glancing out of the corner of his eyes, and leaning his head back against his seat and staring into his side-view mirror when she’d hop in the Camaro, the more she suspected that that wasn’t the case. She constantly found him eyeing someone without looking in their direction, and the one time he did it while in the middle of berating her, Max managed to spot a girl directly in his line of sight. 

She was tall and blonde, and Max had no other descriptors besides classically beautiful. She was the kind of pretty that was elevated in society. One could find a similar face gracing the cover of magazines, or starring in a music video on MTV. Max had first assumed Billy was just chasing tail again, and wrote it off, thinking nothing more on the matter.

And then, the tall, pretty blonde and the legend of Mandy Mueller collided before her very own eyes. 

Mitchell Radner was a gap-toothed asshole. He was one of those boys who pushed over anthills just to feel powerful, and he had set his sights on the dweebs she had taken to calling her friends. Max had skated right by the boy, just before he had knocked Mike Wheeler off his bike, and she actually froze as she watched it happen, nearly stumbling off her board. She kind of thought Mike deserved it a little, what with how rude he was to her when she first got into town, but they had settled that already, and now were friends. And nobody messed with Max’s friends, she reminded herself as she scowled and readied for a confrontation. Being pushed around by a meathead for a stepbrother had a way of making boys her age look like chopped liver in comparison. Max planned to chew him out and not even break a sweat.

Her brows were furrowing in Radner’s direction when she heard Dustin, in his slight lisp, hiss out, “Oh, my God! That’s Mandy Mueller! Oh, my God, okay! Everyone just be cool! She’s coming this way!”

Max angled her head over her shoulder to see that one pretty blonde that Billy would watch from the corner of his eye, not looking so classically beautiful as Max had remembered her, but rather looking more like a horror movie antagonist just before a fresh kill. She stormed passed them wearing a tight pair of white pants and an off the shoulder top that made her look nearly naked from the clavicle up. Max distantly thought it was probably the most inconvenient outfit to murder somebody in. The blood would show on everything.

“—You think you’re gonna get away with that? Not while I’m around, Shitbird!” Mueller shouted, and Max found her eyes widening as she heard her voice and her vocabulary. Mandy Mueller looked like she was meant to have an angelic voice, soft and airy, but she had the actual voice of a violent murderess. Her voice was nails in a blender, its pitch a sharp, stabbing thing that made Max’s whole body feel frozen over and also electrified. It wasn’t nice, and neither were her words. She had an accent Max only heard in mob movies, and it had Max raising her brows as she observed her.

Max hadn’t understood the fuss over her before, but as she watched the older girl raise her fist, making all the boys before her recoil in fear, Max suddenly kind of understood it. It wasn’t just that she was pretty or popular, it was the juxtaposition of her being those things, and then everything else—mean, and violent, and quick to bite. She was like all the gory bits from Friday the 13th; all the parts that she used to cringe at when she was younger, but had vowed to never turn away from in her older age. But she was even better, Max thought, because even Jason Voorhees wasn’t crazy enough to kill someone in an all white ensemble and a pair of heeled, snakeskin boots. 

It had caught Max’s attention, that was for sure. It was probably the most amazing thing she had ever bore witness to, because it was a _girl_. A girl came around, pretty and blonde and looking like a gap ad, and made gross Mitchell Radner hide in the bathroom for a whole school day while crying boo-hoo. 

Max hadn’t believed it when Lucas said it, so the two of them went and leaned against the door, ears pressed to the wood to hear him sniffling. Mandy Mueller made the evil, diabolical asshole, Mitchell Radner, cry like a bitch for a full six hours, and she hadn’t even had to touch him. Max was in awe. She hadn’t ever been so inspired by someone of the female gender.

When they pulled into school one morning, Billy hopped out before she did for once, making Max eye his seat confusedly, before she realized why he had sprung into action so quickly as that nails in a blender pitch sounded from outside the car, “Ugh, get the hell off me, Hargrove.”

Max nearly flew out of the car, whacking some teenage boy who cursed at her and waved his hands in her face. She had eyed him for a moment, before he was gone, fuming elsewhere, and she peeked over the top of the car to see Mandy Mueller and her stepbrother face to face. 

“ _Ooh,_ aren’t you testy today, Queenie?” Billy crooned fiendishly, his hand grabbing her bare wrist as she tried to shove him off. Mandy gave up with a huff, looking tired and petulant, and some of Max’s awe for the girl shifted into disappointment. Mandy Mueller couldn’t have liked Billy, could she? Max would cry, or scream, or maybe run away back to California. She had invested emotionally in Mandy, and now she was bending to Billy’s will? Billy was just some dumb, mean boy. There was just no way Jason Voorhees would ever take shit from Billy Hargrove, so how could Mandy Mueller?

“Testy?” Mandy sneered, ripping her arm from his grasp as she shifted on her feet, pushing herself to be eye-level with Max’s stepbrother, “You just fucking accosted me and dragged me back toward your car like a some child-napper, Dumbass! You’re lucky I didn’t gouge your eyes out!”

“That’s a funny way of saying _‘good morning, please let me blow you’,_ ” Billy grinned, pulling his sunglasses off his face and putting them in the neck of his shirt. His eyes glowed, the sunlight catching in their depths, and Max found her own eyes widening to comical proportions. She was totally bugging out, right? Because she could swear that Billy was enjoying the nasty expression that Mandy was giving him as he grinned, brows jumping on his face.

Um, what was happening!? Max felt like she just might faint. She couldn’t even remember the last time she blinked. Billy didn’t let people _survive_ after talking him in the manner that Mueller was, and Mandy was just there, pretty and shouty, as Billy smirked in her direction. Max was left reeling from what was taking place. She felt like she might have actually been dreaming.

Mandy was instantaneously indignant, “Let me—Ugh! What?! As if, you disgusting pig!”

She slapped Billy in the chest, taking a handful of his jacket’s collar as he laughed riotously at the annoyed expression on her face. Mueller tried to shove him a little, only getting him to bump back into the car, before she was growling and trying to storm off. She didn’t even get away one step, before Billy was grabbing her by the waist with one arm wrapped around her middle and the other lower, out of Max’s sight, and then he was hefting Mueller up off her feet, cackling away. 

“Oh, that’s it!” Mandy grumbled, kicking out into the air as Billy arched his spine back to keep her off the ground as she wriggled around, trying to reach the floor again, “You’re a dead man, Hargrove! Just you fucking wait, Shithead!”

Billy couldn’t even get out a single cognitive sentence as he was too busy cracking up at Mandy, while she hissed and clawed at his arms like a vicious house cat. She writhed around in his hold, looking more flustered by the moment, and just as Max’s idol-worship was in it last weening moments, the blonde did something neither Max or Billy was expecting. Mandy drew up her legs, planting her feet against the car in the parking spot beside them, and kicked out, sending Billy right back into the Camaro with a choked holler of bewilderment, before they ricocheted right down to the ground. 

Max peeked above the bonnet of the car when she heard her stepbrother’s nearly silent sounds of vexation, and Mueller’s wheezing, annoyed shout of, “Ugh! Your upper arm strength is fucking inhuman, Hargrove!!”

“Thanks,” He grunted out, sounding grumbly and struggling for nonchalance as he breathed out, “I work out.”

“Consider giving it a break, honestly!” Mandy quipped back breathlessly as they continued to roll on the ground, “Take up a hobby! Like, _hm,_ I don’t know, leaving me alone!?!”

Finally, a dull thud was heard, before Billy’s voice gritted out from clenched teeth, “Bitch! That was a cheap shot!”

Mandy popped up, eyes wide and smiling manically, hair in disarray, before she was sprinting off, her satchel jostling as she tossed it over her shoulder like a bank robber escaping with a bag of cash. Max watched her go, her blonde hair swaying and shining in the overcast lighting, her stride long as she ran all the way to the high school entrance, nearly banging right into the closed door if it hadn’t been someone opening it for her at the last minute. 

“Mueller! Tell me I didn’t see what I just saw!” A voice guffawed as they encountered Mandy, “Have another pair of balls fallen victim to you?! You may just cut the future population in half with the way you’re going!”

Max found herself smiling at Mandy Mueller’s distant form, before she was looking down to where Billy was clawing his way back to his feet, both hands on the hood of his car’s engine as he pushed himself to his full height with a vindictive sneer.

“You better not let me catch you again, Princess!” Billy called down to the entrance Mueller was lingering in, looking deceptively like he hadn’t just had his balls squashed by said girl, and Mandy poked her head out into the open air, brows raised as she grinned wickedly.

“Ooh, or what?!” Mandy goaded saucily, looking for all the world like she almost liked the mean way Billy was shouting down at her, with his brows furrowed and eyes looking particularly malicious. Max didn’t know how Mandy could look at her stepbrother like that, when his expression was so clearly promising terrible things to come. It was that evil look he always took on when he was planning on breaking something—on making someone pay. He had just resolved himself to revenge, and Mandy Mueller was wearing a mischievous smirk, looking at Billy like the fun was just getting started.

Billy mirrored her when he spotted the grin on her face, his only looking more wolfish than Mueller’s, and Max’s head whipped around as she looked between the two of them.

There weren’t many people who stood up to Max’s stepbrother and didn’t get pummeled, but apparently Mandy Mueller was one of them. 

Max really didn’t know what to make of that.

* * *

“Why are we not talking about the giant fire?!” Mike shouted as all five of the middle schoolers peeked at the high school parking lot from behind a chain link fence, “Or the huge amount of dead fish that just showed up in the lake?! Like, seriously, who _cares_ about your evil stepbrother?!”

“I agree with Max,” Dustin piped in, linking his fingers through the woven metal, “I think this is very important, and we need to get to the bottom of it.”

Lucas rolled his eyes from over Max’s shoulders, “Ugh, you’re just saying that because you want an excuse to watch _Mandy Mueller._ ”

“She’s undeniably beautiful,” Dustin declared, tone clearly leaving no room for debate on the matter, “I’m not hiding the fact that I think she’s attractive! I’d be an idiot to try! She’s _obviously_ attractive.”

“Jonathan told me to be careful around her,” Will inputed, catching Mike and Max’s attention simultaneously.

“What do you mean?” Max found herself nodding along with Mike’s question as they both looked toward Will.

“Yeah, why’d he say that?” Max asked.

“He just said she’s kinda mean sometimes, or whatever,” Will shrugged, “I mean, after everything with Mitchell Radner, I guess he was worried that she’d start picking on us or something.”

“She’s crazy,” Lucas added unhelpfully, and Max rolled her eyes.

“I get it,” Max snorted, before she stated quite seriously, “But it’s not her I’m talking about here. I’m talking about Billy. He’s been… _off._ ”

“You know, Hopper said that a bunch of crops started dying when the Mind Flayer took over last month—maybe the fish thing is the same sort of thing! Like, isn’t anyone at least a _little_ worried?!” Mike exclaimed, being ultimately ignored by his friends as they pressed their faces against the chainlink fence. 

The topics of their conversation happened to appear simultaneously from different exits. Mandy Mueller stepped out into the over-cast weather, tossing her hair over her shoulders, pulling her sunglasses over her eyes, and shouldering her bag; while Billy stepped out, allowing the door to slam into the guy behind him as he shrugged into his leather jacket with furrowed brows, shaking a presumptively empty packet of cigarettes with a miserable expression pulling at his visage. He looked up briefly, eyes squinted and lips downturned, before he spied Mueller, trotting across the parking lot, nose in the air and shoulders back, and smirked in the blonde’s direction.

“Hm,” Dustin hummed contemplatively from Max’s right as he rubbed his chin, “Maybe he likes her.”

“Well, ugh! Obviously,” Max explained, rolling her eyes, “Billy likes every pretty thing on legs—”

“He _has_ gone through a lot of girls,” Lucas agreed from her left, looking to Dustin from over her shoulder as he stated simply, “He’s pretty much a gigolo.”

_“A gigolo—?!“_ Dustin snorted out with bemused disbelief before he was cut off.

“Guys,” Will interrupted their hissed discussion, drawing all three’s attention as he pointed up to Max’s stepbrother, “They’re talking now.”

Max swung her head around to spy Billy snatching Mueller’s arm and swinging her right back around to stand before him, a salacious smirk curling up his lips. From where they stood, they could just make out Mandy’s higher pitch, but Billy’s lower timbre was pretty much a barely distinguishable murmur to their ears.

“You’re so desperate, Hargrove,” Mandy announced blandly, eyes narrowing to silvery slits as she looked to Billy with undisguised contempt, “It’s so gross.”

Despite the words and mean look, Billy simply chuckled, cocking his head down at Mueller as he licked his lips, and shifted restlessly on his feet. He kicked out some gravel with the toe of a boot, before he was looking up to Mandy from underneath dark lashes, giving her a mirroring wicked look, but instead of the disgusted frown Mueller was sporting, Billy was grinning in the blonde’s direction. His smile was the kind of wide, toothy thing Max was used to seeing just when he was about to do something bad, but his eyes were sparkling with some type of amusement she hadn’t ever really seen on her stepbrother before. 

Billy said something to Mandy, making her try to snatch her wrist away, only for him to grasp her tighter and drag her nearer to him. Max could see the strain each of them was under, Mueller’s arm mid-air and her muscles twitching in her wrist as she struggled to free herself, while Billy’s hand clenched tightly, knuckles white as they both fought to strong-arm the other, trying to play off cool indifference and arguing in hissed tones simultaneously.

Max wanted to roll her eyes. She had been right when she called Mandy Mueller childish. The girl fell into every dumb trick Billy pulled. They both danced around each other in a seemingly unending game of cat and mouse, trying to seem cool and nonchalant the whole time. It was so petty and stupid. Just watching as Mueller tried to rip her arm out of Billy’s hold without looking like she was actually trying was making Max embarrassed for the girl. Billy simply grinned, a muscle in his neck jumping as he flexed each time Mandy tried to rip herself out of his grip. He was such a dick.

Mandy swatted at his face with her free hand when her frustration mounted, but Billy caught her small palm in his larger hand, making Mueller stomp a foot as she gave a small growl of vexation. Billy’s smile dropped into something a little softer and more vicious altogether as he tugged her close, his nose just barely against the side of her face as she willfully turned her head away from his looming visage. His lips moved fast as he said something to Mandy that Max couldn’t make out. It must have not been anything good, given the squeamish expression Mueller was wearing as she brought her shoulders to her ears, turtling in on herself as she tried to shrug Billy off her.

“They’re not dating?” Mike asked, suddenly beside Max, and she shook her head.

“No, I don’t think so,” Max replied, looking to Mike and his contemplative expression.

Mike turned his eyes on her then, brows knitting together in the middle of his face as he frowned, “So he’s harassing her?”

Max paused, looking to the severe expression on her new friend’s face, before rolling her eyes, “He harasses everyone, Mike. He’s a jerk. That’s not the part I’m talking about. Just watch.”

All five of them looked on with anticipation, all four boys around Max seeming listless at her previous words and the unsettling scene they were witnessing. They were just in time to catch Mueller, nudging her face closer to Billy’s, chin up and eyes defiant as she seethed, “I’m warning you one last time, Hargrove—Back off, or you’re gonna get yourself hurt.”

Billy grinned predatorily down at Mandy’s slightly shorter form, his mocking words just loud enough to be caught by Max’s ears, “Ooh, is that so? I think I might like to see you try it, Queenie.”

Mandy’s expression turned icy, before she was biting her lip and trying to tug out of Billy’s grip. He laughed riotously at her, tossing his head back as he questioned condescendingly, “Oh, is that all you got in you? Now, Baby, I ain’t gonna lie, I’m a little—”

Billy’s mocking words were cut off as Mueller slammed her knee into his stomach, winding him and making him drop his hold on her to catch himself as he nearly collapsed. Mandy merely watched him with poorly feigned disinterest, her lips still curling up at the corners as she walked around him, eyes alight with malevolent joy. She crossed her arms, placing her weight on one leg as she cocked her hips and angled her head down to watch him sputter.

Lucas drew Max’s attention as he chuckled quietly, “Holy shit.”

“Uh-oh,” Mike commented dryly, his brows raised at the scene the two older teens were making, “She’s in trouble.”

“What’s he gonna do, y’think?” Will inquired under his breath, his own eyebrows knitting just slightly as he looked to Mike beside him.

“Oh, my God,” Dustin whispered with undisguised terror, fingers clenching the chainlink fence with white-knuckled anxiety, “She’s dead. She’s actually gonna die. He’s gonna kill her.”

“Yeah,” Max agreed, nodding fervently before she looked back to the scene with a pointed look, “But watch—“

“You’re a little what now?” Mandy inquired with feigned confusion, her tone a malicious, mocking thing coated with a sugary sweetness, “I didn’t quite catch that, _Baby._ ”

“Fucking bitch,” Billy wheezed out breathlessly as he righted himself, his eyes alight as he watched Mandy begin walking away from him, strolling backwards, her eyes trained on him watchfully. 

Mandy rose her brows with theatrical innocence as she called to him, her voice equal parts devilish and saccharine, “You’re a little fucking bitch? Hargrove, _Honey—Baby—Sweetie Pie._ C’mon now, you gotta give yourself some credit here. Ain’t a single little thing about you—”

“Oh, well,” Billy began, cutting off whatever was left of her scathing diatribe, his eyes lighting up as he grinned suggestively in Mueller’s direction, “I’m sure you’d like to find out all about that, wouldn’t you? How about I go ahead and—“

“Get a life?” Mandy finished for him, obviously not wanting to hear the end of the statement, her voice sharp, and her eyes looking even sharper as she turned her back and picked up her pace, calling back to him, ”Yeah, that’s a good idea, Hargrove. You should look into that sometime.”

Billy’s face twisted into a begrudging smirk as he watched her go, nodding as he hung his head briefly, before tilting his chin back and yelling into the open air, his voice that grating tone he took on when he was irritated and trying to irritate others in return, “How about I just get your number instead?”

“In your dreams!” Mueller shouted, her voice pitchy and cattish.

“Alright,” Billy sang out mockingly, chuckling as he caught the mean expression on Mueller’s face, “Come visit me in my dreams, then, Queenie. I’ll be a good boy, and be in bed by nine. See ya there.”

Mandy paused in her retreat to give Billy a pointedly annoyed look, which he replied to with a flippant shrug and a toothy grin. The blonde tossed her hair over her shoulder with a grumble, turning her back to stomp off in a huff. Billy watched Mueller go, angling his head and licking his lips as he shifted on his feet, eyes narrowed at her retreating form, before he was shaking his head out with a light chuckle and walking off to his own car.

Dustin croaked as he watched the teens part towards their own vehicles, both getting in and peeling off with roaring engines as they raced each other to the exit. The rest of the boys made numerous sounds of confusion and hums of contemplation as they blinked, and Max whirled around to face them and stare expectantly in their direction. When no one said anything, Max finally waved her arms around, bursting with her own impatience.

“See?! I told you! It’s weird!!” Max finally bursted out, and Will jumped at how loud she was.

“She…” Dustin began, eyes wide as he dramatically clutched at his chest, “And then, Billy…”

“Okay, so he likes her,” Mike shrugged, trying to seem casual about the whole thing, but sounding more disturbed the more he tried to hide his obvious bewilderment, “And that was, like—“

Lucan gasped at his own epiphany as he finished for Mike, “Foreplay.”

“No!” Mike shouted to his friend, “Not that, you idiot!”

“Maybe he just likes messing with her,” Will shrugged innocuously as he blinked in Max’s direction, “And he likes that she—“

“Gives in back to him,” Dustin cut off whatever Byers was going to say, eyes comically wide as he whispered, grabbing at his hat in his despair, “Oh, my God, it _is_ foreplay.”

“It’s not that!” Mike screamed, grabbing at his own head before gesturing wildly, “Now everyone stop using the word foreplay, it’s gross!!”

“It is foreplay, though, Mike!” Dustin yelled out dramatically, tossing his head back as he cried out in distress , “A gross, kinky mating ritual that Max’s disgusting troglodyte of a stepbrother has engaged in with Hawkins High’s very own angel! What is this terrible feeling inside me?! I think—oh, my God, I think my heart is stopping. Tell my mother I love her!”

“Okay, Dustin,” Max rolled her eyes, looking to Dustin with a deadpan look, “Shut up already. She’s hardly an angel. She was super rude and annoying when I talked to her.”

“You talked to her?” Will glanced at her curiously, brows arched, “When?”

Max turned to him, ready with a reply, when Dustin cut in over her voice as he echoed her words indignantly, “Hardly an angel?! Maxine, please!! She’s gorgeous! How could you even try and deny it?!”

“We’re not talking about what she looks like, Moron,” Max grumbled, “We all have ears, and we’ve all heard about your gross crush on her, so give it a break. I’m more worried about how weird Billy’s being.”

“Why? He’s only being nice to her, ‘cause he wants to boink her,” Dustin shrugged, “I can’t really blame him, I guess. She’s flawless.”

“Yeah, well, he can boink any girl, can’t he?!” Max exclaimed, before she groaned and ran her hand through her hair, “You don’t even get what I’m trying to say! Billy, like, doesn’t care if someone’s a girl. He’ll still fight a girl! He’ll fight anyone! Why isn’t he like that with her? Mandy Mueller is, like—ugh! I don’t even know! It’s just all so weird. There’s something off with all of this!”

“Well, your brother totally wants to have sex with Mandy Mueller,” Lucas stated with an all-knowing nod of his head, settling Max with an awkward look that had her recoiling from him ever-so-subtly.

Dustin pushed between the two of them, looking to each of them with a telling glance, “And we have to protect her at all costs.”

“Uh,” Mike butted in with a snarky look, “It looks like she’s doing fine all on her own, Dustin.”

“Yeah,” Lucas nodded, “I don’t know if you remember it or anything, but Billy kicked the shit outta Steve Harrington. And if he did that to Steve, he’d literally kill all of us given the chance.”

“Okay, you’re all so stupid!” Max announced, gesticulating wildly as she waved her arms around, “You’re totally missing the point!!”

“What’s the point then?” Mike asked, eyes squinting at her with confusion, and Max paused. 

What was the point? Max gave a sigh. The point was that Billy dated girls, and still watched Mandy Mueller as she walked passed. Billy retreated into his room for hours, and rummaged through moving boxes filled with vinyl records and cassette tapes, brows furrowed and lips pursed around a cigarette. He stopped giving Max the smarmy looks and mocking words she was used to, and blasted music as loud as possible to fill the void. He didn’t boss her around as much—didn’t shit talk, or name call, or try to terrify her in all his usual ways. 

Billy was subdued, and tame, and reserved. It unsettled Max, because she was used to him being anything but those things. She was used to him being a dick. She was used to him picking fights just to have a reason to yell and break things. She was used to him tormenting her, and laughing in her face. Max even got accustomed to his new brand of anger he had begun to wear in Hawkins—the kind that she could see boiling for hours before he’d finally explode. 

But this was different. Billy was prideful, and egotistical, and needed very little reason to pick a fight. He was mean, and relished it. He got people angry like it was his job, and he did that with Mandy Mueller. But with Mueller, it was _different._ It wasn’t explosive—it wasn’t so he could yell and break things. He wasn’t after destruction, but he also wasn’t his new subdued version of himself he was around Max. He was boisterous with Mandy—mocking, and cruel, and cocky—like he had always been, but with only slight differences that Max wouldn’t have even noticed if it weren’t for one simple fact.

Mueller pushed back when Billy came around to shove. It should have been a recipe for disaster. Billy should have hated her, Max knew, because Mandy Mueller was just like him—she went around picking fights like it was her job. Mandy Mueller was the type of girl who looked down on people—she judged, and picked, and condescended. Mandy Mueller dissected people like they were science projects. She rooted around inside them and looked for any small soft spot, and when she found it, she’d poke at it until she left a life-long bruise. 

Hawkins High shouldn’t have been big enough for hot-headed Billy Hargrove and cold-hearted Mandy Mueller. They should have collided in a great display of flaring tempers and wounded ego, or toed around each other like two territorial tigers ready for a fight, but they didn’t. Instead, they co-existed, not peacefully, but rather like two naughty children who pulled at pig-tails and bit at fingers. Not even half as dangerous to one another as they were to the rest of the world. 

“Billy—“ Max sighed, trying to right her train of thought, “Well, he—“

“He what?” Lucas asked, his brows pinching in the middle of his face as he gave her a subtly worried expression, “He’s not doing anything to you, right?”

“No!” Max exclaimed instantaneously, before she stammered out disjointedly, a confused expression pinching at her face, “No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just, he should hate her, right? Mandy Mueller, like, disrespects him, and talks back to him, and yells and curses at him—like, basically does all the stuff that makes him angry, y’know? It’s just weird that he… doesn’t hate her, I guess. But, like—I don’t know—he’s not nice to her like he usually is to pretty girls, either, so it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Huh,” Mike Wheeler hummed, squinting as he stared into the distance and mulled over her words, “Maybe he likes that she’s mean to him. Like, he messes with her, right? Just so she can be rude and yell at him.”

Lucas scoffed, “Yeah, right. Look at the guy wrong, and he’s ready to go off.”

“He’s a loose canon,” Dustin agreed with a wary sigh, “You saw him go off on Harrington, right? His face looked like roast beef when Billy was done with him. He’s a total psycho.”

“Why does it matter though?” Will inquired, quirking his head in curiosity, “He’s only weird around her, right?”

Max gave a exasperated sigh, “No, he’s just being weird all around. I can’t tell what the hell is going on with him, and it’s freaking me out. He’s totally backed off now. I feel like a bomb is about to go off at any second.”

“Well,” Mike shrugged, looking like he was ready to be optimistic as his brows rose, “At least, he’s not being a dick to you anymore, right? Maybe he’s changed after the night at Will’s house—he’s backing off for good now that you stood up for yourself.”

Max couldn’t stop the constipated expression that made its way to her face, and she grimaced at his words, “Yeah, maybe.”

Mike could have been right, but Max still felt like a bomb was going to go off at any second, she just didn’t know when or where. It was a deeply unsettling feeling.

* * *

So, it turned out that Billy hadn’t been the bomb that was about to go off, but it didn’t mean that Max was wrong.

A bomb did drop, it just wasn’t Billy this time around.

“What do you mean it’s just missing, Dustin!?!” Mike bellowed, his voice breaking in pitch as he screeched. 

Dustin grabbed his head in his hands pitifully, “I don’t know, Mike! I screwed up, okay!?!”

“Why did you even keep it, anyway?” Will grimaced in Dustin’s direction, his face scrunching in on itself.

“I told you, didn’t I?!” Lucas proclaimed, never one to miss out on a ‘told you so’, “I knew this was going to be trouble! You can’t just keep monster corpses in a freezer—that’s how horror movies start!!”

“It was dead!” Mike announced, eyes wide, “Dead things just don’t get up and walk off, Dustin!!”

“Well, it’s gone, Mike! I don’t freakin’ know where it went!” Dustin screamed, his voice breaking, “And now we probably have a half-frozen demo-dog running amok somewhere, or worse—some crazy person sneaking off with my discovery!”

“Some person having the body is worse than it reanimating like in Pet Semetary? Really, Dustin?!” Lucas asked rhetorically, his tone scathing and sardonic as he narrowed his eyes toward his friend.

“If it’s alive…” Will trailed off, his eyes wide as a small shudder ran through him, “Does that mean… the Mind Flayer is too?”

Everyone paused, the circle they formed, shouting and yelling to one another in the A/V room, quieting to a near deafening silence as Will’s words hung between them all. Max found her eyes widening as she looked between all the faces of her new friends. Dustin gaped, a small rush of air escaping him; Lucas pursed his lips together, his right hand clenching as he glanced in Max’s direction; and Mike looked to Will with a strangely discomfited expression that solidified the true terror the group had just been gripped by. Will glanced between all of them, looking thoroughly sickened by all of their vaguely distressed expressions.

“If it is alive,” Mike finally spoke into the quiet, his voice stony and determined, “And the Mind Flayer isn’t really gone, then that demo-dog would be a scout. There are no other ones here—the lab cooked ‘em all. If it is alive, we have to find it and kill it before it helps the Mind Flayer find its way to our world again.”

“Good job, Dustin,” Lucas bit out sarcastically, eyes cutting across the group to eye his friend distastefully.

Dustin made a choked sound of dissent, gaping, “Don’t make this my fault! Dead things aren’t meant to come back to life, okay?! No one could have foreseen this, or even prevented it. It’s no one’s fault!”

Max snarked out, “I do kinda feel like this is your fault, actually.”

“See?” Lucas gestured in Max’s direction, an insufferable smirk settled on his features, “Max agrees with me. This is your fault.”

“Well, you all knew about it! If it’s my fault, then it’s at least twenty percent each of you guys’ faults, too!” Dustin exclaimed, gesticulating wildly and pointing between Max and Lucas’s face across the small, cubby-like room.

“Okay,” Mike sighed, holding his hands up for peace between the two shouty boys, “Let’s stop playing the blame game already, and just figure out a plan to solve this before it gets out of hand.”

* * *

The plan was stupid. 

Max tried to veto the plan, but was ultimately out-voted, and it was such total bullshit. She was seriously considering making new, smarter friends at this point. She already got her board broken by Billy in retribution for the last time she got wrapped up in the party’s bullshit, and now she was expected to sneak out for them again. Great, she thought, this situation couldn’t feel any more disastrously familiar.

It was a Friday night, and Billy was gone. He got in an argument with his dad, gave a little lip, and stormed from the house like he didn’t give a shit that his father was shouting slurs at his back, and telling him stay with whatever new whore he was sleeping around with. It was a whole dramatic interlude, but it wasn’t exactly anything unfamiliar. Neil was controlling, and Billy resented it. Every day was a new battle, and the war between their two wills was seemingly never-ending. His controlling nature was the reason her father hated Neil so much, Max knew, and that was the exact reason they had to move. It was such bullshit, honestly, because it wasn’t like her dad was wrong to dislike Neil. He _was_ an asshole.

Max had gone to bed early, waiting for her parents to do so as well. She waited a full two hours, staring at the light glowing from beneath her bedroom door, before a pair of feet blocked the light, and her door creaked open as her mother checked on her. Max had snapped her eyes shut, feigning slumber, and her mother cooed out softly, before pressing a kiss to her head and closing the door again. Max peeked just in time to see the hallway light turn off, and then she heard the sound of two sets of footsteps walking toward the master bedroom. She waited for another thirty, deafeningly silent minutes, before she was swinging herself out of bed and slipping out of the window.

“You’re late,” Mike announced dryly as she arrived at their rendezvous location, and Max rolled her eyes. 

“Feel free to take that up with my parents, Mike,” Max quipped back, giving him an annoyed look, “And besides, I’m only twenty minutes late.”

“It’s cold, though,” Dustin replied miserably, bundled up in a polyester jacket and a pair of mittens. 

“The weather isn’t my fault,” Max retorted defensively, shrugging her shoulders.

Dustin put his hands up in a placating manner, “Okay, okay, chill. I wasn’t saying it was.”

Max hopped onto Lucas’s bike, and all four of them made their way down to Loch Nora. The street was a long, winding road surrounded by dense forest to conceal the large abodes on either side. The houses were crazy big, and Max could just spy some distant porch lights through the trees as they glided past. 

The plan was to hunt down Steve Harrington, accost him, and then get him to help them hunt down the escaped demo-dog. Like Max said, she thought it was stupid, because first of all, they could just do that all by themselves, and second of all, she really didn’t think they were going to be able to make a senior high school student do anything he didn’t want to. And what high schooler wanted to run through the woods at midnight on a Friday with a bunch of middle schoolers? Max didn’t think this plan was very solid. 

Turned out that the plan was even more stupid than she previously assumed.

They skidded to a stop at the end of a winding driveway, listening to the distant sound of pop music and girlish screaming. The driveway was packed with cars, all haphazardly parked at odd angles, plenty spilling out onto the sides of the road. Mike and Lucas turned their heads to stare at Dustin as he gaped.

“He’s having a party,” Lucas stated drolly, before sighing exasperatedly, “Just great! We didn’t even account for the fact that Harrington was having a party!”

“Oh, my God,” Dustin breathed, eyes glittering with awe, “My first high school party.”

“We cannot go in there,” Max declared firmly, hopping off of Lucas’s bike, “We just can’t! Billy might be in there, and there is no way in hell he’ll let me live if he finds me.”

Mike merely rolled his eyes, “Well, we have to get Harrington, so we gotta go in, Max. Stay out here if you want.”

“What are you even worried about?” Dustin asked flippantly, snorting in dry amusement, “It’s not like Billy’s gonna be at Steve’s party, Max. Your brother hates Steve, like, _a lot._ It’s a Friday night, if he’s at a party, it’s not gonna be this one, okay? There’s nothing to even worry about.”

“He’s kinda right,” Lucas agreed half-heartedly, looking only slightly sheepish over disagreeing with her, “It’s not like he’d be here of all places.”

Max was out-voted again, and it was such total bullshit! Mike led the gang towards the entrance, dropping his bike into the bushes a few feet from the front door, Lucas and Dustin following suit. Max rolled her eyes as she tromped after them. They climbed the front steps, Mike first, Dustin second, and Lucas’s back right in front of Max’s eyes. Mike swung open the front door, and the muffled pop music exploded into the night, Duran Duran blasting out of the home. 

They all marched in a single file, each entering the lavish home and casting a glance around the packed house. The ceilings were high, and the staircase was a stark, floating thing that had Max eyeing it warily as they all wound their ways through the home. The entire house was packed with teens, some dancing, and some drinking, and all falling over themselves in their inebriated state. Max could hear people shouting and glass shattering, but couldn’t find the source of the disconcerting sounds anywhere in sight. The whole thing was overwhelming.

She hadn’t realized she had stopped walking until a hand was enclosing her own, and Lucas’s face appeared before her eyes.

“Are you okay?” He asked, brows downturned, and Max nodded wordlessly, rendered temporarily speechless by all the chaos around her. Lucas nodded back, before tightening his grip on her hand and tugging her along after him. 

Distant, roaring chanting was happening, and then someone was streaking across the room, nearly bowling over Lucas and her as they stormed passed. How did people find parties fun when they were so loud and panic-inducing?! Max felt like her head was going to explode from all the pandemonium around her. There was something wrong with teenagers. Seriously.

Max kept her head down as Lucas shepherded her through the crowd, only lifting it once they were out and in a less crowded room. Max spotted a refrigerator framed by an elaborate line of cabinets and realized they were in the kitchen. She found herself craning her neck to see if Steve was anywhere in sight now that she wasn’t in the thick of all the chaos. Her head cleared, and Max began to tug Lucas out of the room once she realized he was stalling in the quieter space.

“C’mon,” She mumbled as she tugged him harshly, and Lucas jerked into motion after her.

They met up with Mike in a room that looked vaguely like a dining room, and Max rose her brows when her gaze settled on Mike’s flustered form.

“I think I just walked in on—“ Mike began, giving them with a thoroughly traumatized look, “I—I don’t even know. I don’t want to believe I saw what I just saw.”

“Well, we haven’t found Harrington in the kitchen or the living room,” Lucas announced, deciding to just ignore the horrified look on Mike’s face and his ambiguous announcement, and Max nodded along with his words.

“Yeah, no where in sight,” She inputted, and Mike shuddered slightly.

“Well, I didn’t find him in the garage, or the bathroom, or the downstairs office thing,” Mike stated shallowly with a grimace, “Do not go into the third door on the right in the downstairs corridor, whatever you do.”

Max rose her brows, “Why?”

“There are people there,” Mike called out hollowly, “Doing unspeakable things.”

“Oh, my God,” Max whispered, snorting in amusement at the repulsed expression on Wheeler’s face, before she glanced in Lucas’s direction to say, “I almost want to know.”

“Well, I definitely don’t,” Lucas grimaced, “So keep it to yourself, Mike.”

“Chicken,” Max goaded with a grin, and Lucas rolled her eyes at her in good humor.

“The two of you are so annoying,” Mike frowned, expression still disconcerted, before he began to move towards an exit, “Now, let’s go find Dustin before he gets himself into trouble.”

They looked around the entire first floor of the home, coming up empty handed, and they were in the middle of making their way towards the backyard when Dustin stumbled right into the house, drenched and looking like a drowned rat as he wrung out his hat and shook out his hair. They all paused when they saw him, and Dustin scowled when he spotted his friends, throwing his hands into the air.

“What the hell?!” Dustin shouted over the booming stereo they were a few feet away from. The crowd was thinner closer to the near-deafening speakers, and the flow of the party had dumped all four middle schoolers right into the desolate corner of the sprawling living room, “Where the hell have you guys been?! These two assholes just picked me up and dumped me into the pool! And I had no back up!!”

Max was the first one to react, and she chuckled, tossing her head back, “Ha! Oh, my God, classic! You should see your face right now, Henderson!”

Dustin shot her an indignant look.

Lucas snorted from beside her, shrugging helplessly in Dustin’s direction, “Sorry, it is kinda funny, man.”

“Look,” Mike suggested, “We’ll go find some towels to dry you off, and then we’ll all go check upstairs together. We’ll be stronger as a group, so we’ll just stick together until we get to Steve.”

Dustin shook his head out again, purposefully directing the spray of water to Max and Lucas, and the pair griped in unison, making Dustin grin with vengeance in their direction. Mike rolled his eyes and led their party through the masses, swinging open doors tentatively, trying to find some form of a linen closet. They didn’t find a linen closet downstairs, but they did find a rag in the kitchen, using it to ring out the excess moisture from Dustin’s soaked clothes. It wasn’t exactly the most effective tool, but it was all they had.

“We’ll go upstairs—“ Mike declared, and Dustin merely grumbled miserably as his feet squelched with every step. 

They all filed up the stairs, Max staring down at her feet to make sure she didn’t fall in between the freakishly free-floating steps. When they got near the top of the staircase, Mike paused, and everyone behind him froze, suddenly hearing what Mike stopped for.

“Stop calling me Steven, Mandy!”

“Steven, Steven, Steven—“

“It’s not my name!!”

_“Steven, Steven, Steven, Steven, Steven—!!”_

Everyone perked up at the voices, all four of them scrambling to make it up the staircase, Dustin shouting just as they all turned the corner, “Hey, did someone say they know where Steve Harrington is?!”

It was like time slowed, and everyone just stared at one another. Mandy Mueller, Steve Harrington, and her stepbrother all stood at the end of a hallway, crowded in on one another. Steven and Mandy were in each other’s faces with Billy on the outside of their yelling match, watching on languidly, vague amusement evident on his features. 

Steve and Billy turned their heads in unison, Steve’s eyes widening at Dustin’s exclamation, and her stepbrother’s gaze narrowing dangerously in her direction. Max cursed everything in her head. Stupid Dustin, and stupid Lucas, and stupid Mike! They were all so stupid, and so was this plan!! She was literally going to die over their stupidity!! She really hoped it was worth it. Stupid assholes.

Max panicked, “Oh, my God—!“

She sprung into action, sprinting back around the corner and hauling ass down the stairs, conveniently forgetting about her weariness over the floating pieces of wood until the last moment, when her foot nearly slipped out beneath her. She gave a little shriek, before she caught herself.

“Hey!” She heard from behind her, and Max’s eyes almost shot out of their sockets as she heard the distant, heavy footfalls of her stepbrother, and personal torturer, “Where the hell do you think you’re going?!”

Out of sight! Preferably back home! Anywhere, but here!! Max was panting as she made it to the bottom of the staircase, her breath leaving her almost as sobs. She wasn’t tired at all, just freaking panicking! She spotted that overwhelming throng of sweaty, dancing teens she barely escaped when she first entered the house, and distantly thought that would be a good way to lose him.

“Hey, you little shit!” Billy bellowed, his voice sounding so close, she jolted, “What the fuck are you doing out of the house, Maxine?!”

Max briefly peered over her shoulder, expecting him to be within arm’s reach, and readying herself to duck out of the way. Billy was a few steps behind her, and she nearly dove into the crowd, scrambling through the sweaty bodies, gasping for breath and crouching slightly in hopes to make herself as small and unnoticeable as possible. She made it through the crowd, appearing on the other side and not spotting Billy anywhere.

Max figured out why when she heard his voice, “What the hell did I say, Harrington?! I warned you, didn’t I?!”

Billy’s voice was clipped with anger, and the mass of people shifted, everyone staggering back as a few feminine screams were heard. She heard the crashing of glass and the sounds of a fight breaking out, and began shoving herself back toward the chaos. She couldn’t just let Billy kick Steve Harrington’s ass for no reason. It wasn’t right.

Mike ran right into her, giving a grunt of pain, before grabbing her shoulders and looking her over, “Holy shit, are you alright?!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, but Billy—!” Max tried to explain, before Mike was nodding frantically.

“I know! Him and Steve are duking it out,” Mike breathed, “I think we need to get out of here.”

“We can’t just leave Steve!” Max protested, indignation coloring her tone, “Are you serious, Mike?!”

“It’s not just Steve and Billy!” Dustin screamed, exploding from within the throng of teens and appearing out of seemingly nowhere, “Mandy Mueller’s fighting, like, five guys upstairs! She head-butted one and everything! I saw it with my own eyes!!”

“What?!” Max exclaimed bewilderedly, and all three of them turned their eyes up to the bannister above them. 

Mandy Mueller was being lifted by two boys, one wrapping their arms around her from behind, and the other trying to grab her legs up off the ground. It was startlingly reminiscent to the way Billy lifted her the few times she had caught them grappling with one another, but now, Max found herself strangely worried for the girl. 

“I’ve got her!!” The boy holding her exclaimed. He was blond with a thick neck and wide biceps. Max quietly thought that they might have actually been bigger than his head, and that couldn’t have been normal by any means. 

The guy that grabbed Mandy’s ankles hefted her body up, and both boys worked together to carry her. She thrashed the whole time, red faced and gritting her teeth, before a horrific screech left her body, her spine arching up. Max watched on in horror—distantly thinking that Mandy looked like she was possessed by the devil in that moment as she bucked out against her captors. Mueller toppled the man behind her the same way she had with Billy, sending the two of them into the wall at their backs, and the boy that held her ankles dropped her, falling back into the bannister. 

Picture frames swung precariously on their hooks, some falling with a shattering clamor, and Mueller shoved the back of her skull into the guy’s face behind her, making him cry out. The boy who had been holding her legs made a move toward her, pushing himself off the banister above the party, and punching Mandy across the face as she tried to wring herself free from the blond still holding her. Her head flew back, her cranium smacking right back into the boy behind her, making him move one of the big arms holding her to clutch at his bleeding nose. Mandy lifted her legs and kicked out with both feet in retribution for the punch, and the boy who hit her went flying back into the balcony, his whole upper body swinging over the railing.

“Holy shit!!” Dustin screamed from beside her, and Max found herself looking over to him, to see him looking down at Steve, who was pinned beneath Billy’s weight, “Steve! Move!!”

Max watched as the boy flew from the second floor and flattened her stepbrother’s form, before she was gaping up at Mandy Mueller as she planted her feet on the ground, expression taught as she strained against the arms holding her. Mandy bowed herself in an angle that looked freakishly unnatural, and did something Max had only ever seen in kung fu movies—she planted her feet, bent over quickly, and swung the boy behind her right over her back and into the still wobbling banister. Mueller straightened with a dangerously bright gleam in her wild eyes, her teeth bared in something that was neither angry or happy, but also a little both. Mueller took one boot and launched it down, kicking the blond in the stomach, and making the handrail groan against the weight. 

“You bitch!” A voice exclaimed, and Max watched as another boy appeared at the balcony from somewhere on the second floor, his face was already bloody, and two more boys appeared over each of his shoulders—one with a head that reminded Max of a gremlin for some reason, and another wearing a backwards hat. 

Mandy tossed her head back, cackling wildly, before she was colliding with them in a tangle of limbs. The bloody boy tossed her right back into the boy that had first grabbed her, and she slammed back like a ragdoll, her neck swinging back almost bonelessly. She stumbled back up, punching him across the face, and pushing him back into the wall. She grabbed a picture just as it fell, smashing it—glass and all—right across the boy’s face. Just as he grabbed at his face, the other two boys were grabbing each of her arms, and yanking her off her feet. Mueller cried out, thrashing and becoming fitful as they dragged her back toward the blond that was getting to his feet, clutching at the stairwell railing. 

And then it happened so fast. Mueller was kicking and wriggling, and the boy who just had a picture smashed across his face was roaring with anger, scrabbling at his face and looking to Mueller with a bloody veil running over his eyes. He tackled her, and the entire clump of people pushed against the railing. Max watched as it splintered, snapping out and warping, and then she looked down to what lied below.

Billy was shoving his way out from under the first body that collided into him, pushing himself to his hands and knees as he tried to shrug the boy off of him, and looming right above him was Mandy Mueller and all four boys trying to kick her ass. 

“Holy shit!” Max shouted, looking between her stepbrother and what awaited him, and thought that she should maybe warn him, because yeah, she hated Billy, but they were stuck with one another now, so she couldn’t just let him _die,_ “Billy, incoming!!”

They all fell, everyone slamming into one gigantic human catastrophe. Dust flew up, and Max squinted into the wreckage, trying to spy Billy at all. She could only see one twitching hand, an index finger adorned with his silver ring crooking up twice, before the entire hand was clenching into a white-knuckled fist. Max breathed a sigh of relief. For a second there, she almost worried he died. That would have been an awkward one to have to explain.

“I think my leg’s broken!” One boy shrieked out, his whole statement sounding like one heaving sob, before he was screeching out through gritted teeth, “That fucking bitch broke my leg!!”

“Someone call nine-one-one,” Someone commanded calmly over the frenetic panic, and everyone began to shift around them. Max found herself pushing forward toward the pile of mangled bodies, Mike and Dustin at her heels. 

“Holy shit,” Lucas stated dully, brows pulled up as Max appeared beside him, right at the mouth of the crowd that had formed around the teens. He was looking at a leg that was sticking up at an odd angle, half a shin protruding beneath the skin, and Max grabbed his hand, catching his attention. Lucas glanced at her vacantly, “Did you see all of that?”

Max nodded wordlessly, and the crowd around the four of them picked up, making them all turn their attention to the scene. Mandy Mueller was sliding out of the pile of bodies like a svelte feline, on her hands and knees, and slinking out like she wasn’t just part of a human pancake. She stepped to her feet, her skirt all the way up to her hips, and she shimmied as she pulled it back down. The crowd gasped, and she popped her collar, pushing up the sleeves of her over-sized denim jacket and running a hand through her dreamy locks. 

Max found her jaw dropping as she watched Mueller right herself, while the rest of the boys groaned and writhed around in one collective pile of limbs and douche-y clothes. Mandy Mueller just kicked some guys’ asses, broke a guy’s leg, fell from a second story balcony, and then got up looking like a calendar model. Jason Voorhees, eat your heart out.

“Mandy _fucking_ Mueller, you piece of shit!” A voice bellowed, the crowd opening up to reveal the source of the sinister tone, a guy with shaggy, dusty blond hair, wearing a puke green and white striped polo coming into view. The guy stood tall and foreboding, and then pointed a single finger in Mueller’s direction as she stood before the carnage she left in her wake, “You’re gonna fucking pay for what you did to my little sister, you little cocktease!”

Mandy smirked, her lips closed and stretching across her face as she eyed the boy before her with fire burning bright in her malevolent gaze. Ruination was a promise in her eyes as she shouted back, her voice irreverently derisive, “Chuck _fucking_ Radner, your little sister’s a whore—and your little brother’s a punk—and I’m gonna make you my bitch before this night’s over, Bitch!!”

Max heard her jaw snap shut at the words more so than felt it, and watched as Mueller closed in on Radner. Mandy prowled over like a panther, sleek and gliding, eyes trained on the hunt, and Chuck charged forward with more shoulder than anything else. Mueller pranced right out of his way as he nearly toppled her over, and she swatted his face, before clenching her fist and winding up. She connected once, knocking Chuck into the coffee table, which he stumbled over, and she was rearing back to hit him while he was struggling back to his feet, when a hand appeared, snagging her arm. Her limb was ripped back, and Mueller tried to pivot to swing out with her left hand, only for that arm to be caught as well. When she realized her position, her eyes widened and she watched restlessly as Chuck Radner got back up to his feet, grinning viciously at seeing her caught.

“What was that again, Bitch?” Radner sneered, “You’re gonna make me what?”

Mandy tried to rip herself free, crying out helplessly, before screaming belligerently in the face of the boy who was sure to beat the shit out of her, “You fucking heard me, Radner! I know I didn’t fucking stutter—!”

The end of her statement was clipped as the lumbering blond knocked her lights out. Mandy’s head bobbed back as she burbled, her whole body going slack and dangling for a moment as she was held up by the guys on either side of her, and then she was shaking herself out of it, just in time to get another punch to her face.

Max looked back towards the direction Steve and Billy were supposed to be collapsed, panic fraying her mind. She didn’t know what to do. Mandy Mueller was being held, and punched senseless, and obviously needed help, and no one was doing anything. All Max could think was that Billy would know what to do, and Billy would actually do something, because he fixated on Mandy Mueller, like, every day, and everyone agreed that he totally wanted to boink her, right? So he would definitely do something to help.

Billy clambered out front he pile of bodies, righting himself stiffly and wincing a little as he adjusted the collar of his leather jacket. Max nearly cried out with relief, but instead exclaimed, “Oh, my God! Billy, do something!!”

He looked towards her with keen eyes, brows furrowing minutely, before he was following her gaze to Mandy. Gone was the evident pain in his visage as Billy’s face morphed into a slack look of disbelief, watching as Mueller kicked out against the boys holding her, sending Chuck Radner across the room, the blond’s feet literally leaving the ground as Mandy kicked him. Billy’s face hardened with a merciless viciousness as he closed in on the scene, punching one guy with absolutely no warning other than the slight furrow of his brows. 

Mandy helped with her liberation, fighting herself free once her left hand was released with Billy’s help, and Billy’s crackling laugh echoed into the house hauntingly as he watched Mueller. Mandy looked back to him with an impish grin, pink lips pulling up at their corners and blue eyes shining with a wildness Max hadn’t truly seen before.

Mueller’s voice came out airy and breathless, its sound a gentle caress amongst the chaos that was erupting all around, “Good lookin’ out, Hargrove!”

Max saw it then. Mandy and Billy didn’t make sense, but then it clicked for her in that moment. Billy was a boy with an appetite for destruction, and Mandy Mueller was a wild thing that tore up everything in her wake. They made a perfect pair. Billy lived his life fast—fast car, fast temper, and fast with moving on—and all the girls he had before had to either keep up, or get left behind. Mandy Mueller wasn’t just keeping up, though—she was hell on heels, passing him up so fast, she might as well have left a streak of fire in her wake. 

When Mandy Mueller walked in the door, Billy wasn’t the most destructive thing in the room anymore. Billy knew it, too. He looked at her like she was a force of nature—a lightning strike that lit up a cloudy sky, a coastal storm, a raging gust that slanted all the palm trees—she was dangerous, and so terrifying, that it was almost a beautiful thing. 

Billy had been a lonely storm in a world of sunny skies before he encountered Mandy Mueller—he had raged with wild winds and sleeting rain while everyone else was gentle breezes and fluffy white clouds. He was willfully destructive, and had been unmatched by any others. But now Mandy Mueller had appeared, and he saw in her what he hadn’t found in anyone besides himself. Now, he realized he didn’t have to be so lonely anymore.

Max understood the fascination now. She had mulled it over time and time again, and now, Billy’s interactions with Mueller made sense. Mueller wasn’t so much a thing to be conquered; she was a fire—she wasn’t something he could hold without hurting himself trying to contain her. Billy knew that—knew she burned her brightest when she had something to consume, so he added his kindle and inched just close enough to feel her warmth. 

Billy watched Mueller like she was a prize, from afar and with wanting eyes. Just close enough to see her burn without getting himself hurt in the process.

Really though, it just dwindled down to Billy finally finding someone who enjoyed fighting the world as much as he did, Max realized. She could call them storms, or fires, or any other terrible, destructive things—but really, it all came down to Mandy Mueller and Billy Hargrove being two terrible, troublesome people who found mirrored images in one another without ever really meaning to. They were temperamental, and egomaniacal, and cruel just for the fun of it. 

Max looked between the two teens. Mandy Mueller with her bared teeth as she cracked a glass bottle over someone’s head, and Billy looming over another boy’s form as he raised his fist, and all Max could think was that if they ever managed to find common ground, well…

The world would be, like, _so totally_ screwed.


	14. Violent, and Young, and Desperate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve Harrington's house party takes a positively delightful turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so the chapter title is accidentally inspired by the outsiders and i have no explanation as to how that even happened??? idk w/e lol
> 
> tbh this chapter is a mess (and so am i tbh i've survived the weekend from hell lmao i should stop having so much fun i'm gonna die of dehydration djksldlskadklsdaldsakls) so I might go back and tweak some things but for rn it's gonna be good enough b/c i'm tryna soldier to the next few chapters to more fun stuff lol sorry yall ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> AND YOU GUYS!! <33 honestly i love you all so much hfejnldclknaljdnslcs I CAN'T EVEN STAND IT i have so much fun talking to you all and I love you all and I can't even begin to explain how wonderful and lovely you all are! <3 thank you so much for all the kind feedback it is the honestly the best motivator ;___; <3!!!
> 
> also, as per the usual, there will be violence and grossness and mean boys and no-no words. stay in school and finish your homework and pls do not be like these characters, lol. be good and remember to use your 'please' and 'thank you's, kiddos

“Where the hell is Mandy Mueller?!” A boisterous voice called over the annoying pop music that was playing, and Billy craned his neck to see the guy who had shouted the words.

His eyes swept the crowd, before he spotted a group of ten or so boys wearing plaid button ups and down vests, some of them sporting sunglasses while the others wore ball caps, some backwards, some not. They stood a little taller than the high school students, and strutted around like a bunch of cockerels in a fucking hen house. Their appearance was enough to have Billy on edge. Nothing was worse than a group of college douchebags thinking they’re hot shit and coming around to crash a party. 

“I said,” The guy began again, his sandy brown hair looking a tad too greasy from its styling gel, “Where the fuck is Mandy Mueller?! I know that little bitch is around here! I saw her car out front!!”

Nobody replied, and one of the boys grabbed a lamp and threw it to the ground, breaking Billy out of whatever trance he was in. He lifted his arm from the girl he had sidled up to in the kitchen, looking down at her with a brief smile to placate her before he was gone and searching the crowd. It seemed he wasn’t the only one, because he ended up running into Harrington at the bottom of the staircase, both of them looking to one another awkwardly.

“Uh, have you seen Mandy around?” Harrington asked in a hush, and Billy rose his brows.

“In the garage over an hour ago,” Billy jerked his thumb in the direction of the garage, “Why? Is this about those guys? Who the hell are they?”

Harrington merely shoved passed him, taking the stairs two at a time, and Billy gave a displeased sound as he followed him, hot on his heels. Steve began shoving open every door in the upstairs hallway, peering in each one, before moving onto the next, and Billy trailed after him, a little confusedly.

“Well? Who the hell are those guys?” Billy asked again, louder, as they peered into an empty dark blue room with a poster of Christie Brinkley on the wall that he was almost positive was Harrington’s bedroom. Ugh, typical. Billy wondered if Harrington had ever had a single free thought of his own.

Harrington sighed, running a hand through his hair exasperatedly, “I can’t do this with you right now, man. They used to go to our school, okay?”

“And? Why the hell are they looking for Mueller?” Billy narrowed his eyes in Steve’s direction, and before Steve could answer, a loud shout was heard from downstairs.

“There she is! Get her!!” Both boys paused, looking to one another with very different expressions of bewilderment, before thunderous footsteps sounded down the corridor, and Mandy’s panicked face came into view. She tore down the hall, right passed them standing in Steve’s bedroom doorway, before ripping open a closet and stuffing herself inside wordlessly. They watched her with raised brows, before whipping their heads around to spy three more people running down the hall.

“Where the hell did she go, huh?” One guy shouted into Steve and Billy’s collective faces, and Billy found himself rearing back with a grimace.

“Whew, you ever consider mints, Buddy?” Billy taunted, face screwed up with disgust, and the guy merely breathed harder into his face in reply. 

“You being funny with me, Faggot?” His words had Billy staring into his face with gritted teeth.

“I don’t know—you laughin’, Bitch?” He retorted through a sneer, his blood roaring for him to just fucking do it already. He wanted to tear into this nameless collegiate motherfucker. The sunglasses on his head looked too breakable, and part of Billy’s mind wondered what color his blood would stain the annoying striped green polo he was wearing. He thought about painting him fucking black and blue with his fists, and whatever fucking color red and green made.

“Hey!” Steve shouted, getting just a smidgen of Billy’s attention as he glanced to him out of the corner of his eye, “You can’t just throw my mom’s stuff around like that! That’s real fur!!”

Down the hall, the two other boys were tearing through the closet Mueller had hid in and coming up empty handed. Billy found himself balling up his fists as he readied himself for a fight once they found her. They never did, though. They turned out the entire closet, and tore through every room, and they still couldn’t find her. The three made their way up and down the hall one last time, before turning their attention solely on Harrington.

“Listen up, Harrington,” One barked in Steve’s face, “You see that little bitch Mandy Mueller, you tell me! Her ass is mine, and if any of you little pussies step to me again, I’ll kick your ass once I’m through with kickin’ hers, got it?”

Billy rose his brows, pursing his lips and saying nothing in reply, while Steve nodded along with a sigh as he raised his hands up in surrender, “Yeah, Chuck, I get it. I’ll be on the lookout, but I haven’t seen her, man.”

Chuck. Billy committed the name to memory. He was going to make sure he beat his new friend Chucky within an inch of his fucking life next time he got in his face.

The three boys left, stomping down the hallway and then the stairs, calling down, “She’s not up here, man!”

Billy looked to Steve with a disappointed expression as he shook his head, “You really gonna let some tool talk to you like that in your own home, Harrington?”

“Do you know who that was?” Steve rose his voice, pointing vehemently in the direction the boys disappeared in, “That was Chuck Radner!”

Billy blinked dully, “Radner—as in, related to Amy Radner?”

“Yeah, Dipshit!” Steve hissed out, “And he is going to kill Mandy when he gets his hands on her. Where the hell did she go, anyway?! Did you see where she went?! If they fight, they will literally tear my house apart, and my parents will kill me.”

Billy was struggling to keep up with Steve’s train of thought. Maybe he was a little bit tipsy, but not drunk enough to be that confused. But still, he was a little iffy on the reason Harrington was trying to find Mandy. Was he going to feed her to the wolves or save her? Billy wasn’t so sure. He really didn’t know Harrington that well, he realized in that moment. His mind briefly went back to wondering what the hell Mueller and Harrington last fought about.

“The closet?” He suggested dryly, pointing to it, “We both saw her go in—“

His words were cut off by a large crash above them, before a girly scream was heard followed by a great clatter, and then Mandy was dangling outside of the house, boots kicking in the window at the end of the hall. Billy’s brows rose as he shoved Harrington out of the way, and stormed down the hall, sliding open the window and shoving his head out to look up at her. It was definitely Mueller, and his brows jumped, before he was swiveling out of the way as her heeled feet kicked out wildly, nearly catching him in the side of the head.

“What the fuck are you doing out here?” He hissed, before leaning around the window seal and wrapping one of his arms around the back of Mueller’s bare legs, “C’mon, Crazy Ass, get back inside.”

“No way!” Mandy tried wiggling out of his hold, and he clenched her legs together tighter, trying to yank her free from her hold on the gutters above them to drag her back inside. She was breathless, her skin glistening with sweat and nearly searing to the touch, and it made him wonder how long she had been giving those college guys the run around. Billy anchored himself, spreading his feet and bending his knees as he lowered his center of gravity, and she cried out against the strain on her fingers as he tried to rip her down against her will, “They haven’t left yet!”

“Mueller!” Harrington whispered harshly, eyes wide as he leaned out of the window and tilted his head up to her, “How’d you get on the roof?!”

She let out a cocky, but still breathless, chuckle as she sang out tauntingly, “A magician never reveals her secrets, Stevie.”

“No, seriously!” Harrington insisted, and Billy gave him a nasty look.

“Can you do this another time, Idiot?!” Billy seethed as he gestured to Mueller clutching the storm gutters with all the strength she had in her, “And fucking help me already?!”

Harrington proved to have all the use of a potted fucking houseplant, and Billy ended up shoving him out of the way and straddling the window to use both arms to pull Mueller back into the house. She squirmed the entire way, kicking her feet even when she was dangling half out of his lap, legs still sticking out of the window. She paused, sprawled over his lap as she realized just what predicament she was in, face to his groin, before giving him a cold look as she flopped gracelessly back into the house. Billy was nearly positive he caught a glimpse of black lace underwear, but it could have been wishful thinking.

“Ugh! Shit!” Mandy huffed out as she scrambled back to her feet and dusted herself off, and Billy pulled himself back into the house smoothly, earning him an irritated look from the girl before him.

Steve stood before Mueller, putting his hands on his hips as he gave her a bewildered expression, “Well?”

“Well, what, Steve!?” Mandy exclaimed in a furious whisper, “I’m on the lam! I’m a wanted woman!”

Steve’s eyes nearly bulged from their sockets as he gestured around himself, “Yeah, I got that, Dipshit! I meant how the hell did you go from the closet to the roof of my house?!”

Mandy gave pause, blinking briefly before her mouth was opening and she was inhaling sharply to ready her reply. Billy didn’t need that information, and promptly interrupted her, gravelly voice cutting over her next words, “Who the hell are all those guys chasing you?”

“I’m not sure,” Mandy answered immediately, wheezing a bit still as she gave him a vaguely grateful nod, “Thanks for not snitching, though. You’re a champ.”

“It was Chuck Radner,” Steve explained, and Mandy looked like she smelled a fart as she heard the name, nose scrunching up and brows pinching together, her lips curling up with her dislike.

“Oh,” Mandy replied articulately, putting her hands on her hips with a sigh, “That guy.”

“Yeah, Mueller,” Steve replied drolly, “Good job kicking his sister’s ass, ‘cause now he’s back for revenge.”

“Well, Steven, Amy didn’t exactly give me an option, did she?!” Mandy announced in a hush, her voice coming out like one long hiss, “I couldn’t just sit there and cry about being hit by a car like some bitch, could I?! Amy was getting too big for her britches and someone had to kick her ass at some point, Harrington!!”

“She does have a point, Harrington,” Billy agreed with a nonchalant nod, and Mandy smacked Harrington’s arm, gesturing to Billy with an extended hand.

“See?! Hargrove agrees with me!” Mandy pointed out, and Steve pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Billy Hargrove is a bloody-thirsty psycho, Mueller!” Steve declared, not even looking in Billy’s direction, and Billy rose his brows at the insult, waiting to catch his eye so he could give Harrington a dirty look.

“At least he’s not a pussy like you, Steven!” Mandy yelled, breaking out of her whispering, and Billy full on grinned as his head whipped around in her direction. That was probably the closest thing to a compliment she had ever given him, and a small, shitty little part of his heart warmed at her words. Ugh, _fuck,_ he had it so bad for her it was almost sickening.

“Stop calling me Steven, Mandy!” Steve finally shouted, “It’s not my name!”

“Steven, Steven, Steven, Steven, Steven, _Steven—!_ ” Mandy screeched, cheeks reddened and hair wild as she yelled over Steve’s voice. Billy looked between the both of them as they went at it, nodding at Mueller’s shouts to Harrington, and turning to look at Steve with a smug smirk as Mandy yelled him down to nearly nothing. 

“Hey, did someone say they know where Steve Harrington is!?” A voice shouted from down the hall, and all three teens turned their attention towards the sound. Steve rose his brows, and Mandy glanced over with barely there interest, her mind obviously still fixed on insulting Harrington and not much else. Until another voice shouted out in a clipped manner, “Oh, my God—!”

Billy’s eyes darted up when he recognized the voice, spotting his stepsister at the top of the staircase, just as she was turning tail and hauling ass out of sight. Mandy perked up from beside him, looking between Max’s exit and his face expectantly.

“Hey!” He barked at her retreating form, before he was tearing down the hall, “Where the hell do you think you’re going?!”

The huddle of younger boys tried to impede him, all of them shouting varying versions of, _“Run, Max!”_ as Billy bowled right through them, shoving them aside so easily it felt like they were made of paper.

“Hey, you little shit!” He bellowed again, louder, hopping down the stairs two at a time as he launched himself down he stairwell after Maxine, “What the fuck are you doing out of the house, Maxine?!”

He caught a brief glimpse of her wide eyes as she turned to check if he was gaining on her, before she was ducking into the crowd. He cursed as he lost visual on her, feet carrying him to the spot she just disappeared.

“Hey, wait, man!” Harrington’s footsteps sounded from behind Billy as he stormed through the house, shoving through the crowd rabidly to try and spot Maxine’s red head amidst the throng of people. It was too fucking cramped, and he couldn’t spot her vibrant red hair anywhere in sight. It was really pissing him off. He couldn’t get a night off from having to hunt her down, and he was ready to tear Steve Harrington’s big, air-filled head right off his shoulders for simply being the one she was looking for.

Billy’s shoulder was grabbed as Harrington tried to stop him on the spot once he caught up, and Billy spun around, striking out like a whip as he cracked one right across Steve’s cheek, making the boy in question stagger back away from him and clutch the side of his face.

“Hey, man, listen, it’s not—“ Steve tried to placate, voice muffled. He really was such a pussy. Billy just hit him, and Harrington still thought he was going to be talking this out. Mueller was right about all the peace, love, kumbaya shit being bullshit.

“What the hell did I say, Harrington?!” Billy barked, his blood making his ears roar in time with his heart, and his whole being running hot with the need for a fight. Maxine was nothing but trouble for him, and he couldn’t get a break. So much for planning to pull some strange tonight. Billy wanted to tear something apart, and Steve was looking mighty fine at the moment, “I warned you, didn’t I? If I ever found out you were fucking around with my sister—“

Steve cut him off with a punch to the jaw that had Billy’s teeth clacking together as he tasted blood; and if Billy had to taste his own blood, he was going to make Harrington taste it, too. He spat into Harrington’s face without a second thought, making Steve grimace with disgust, before Billy was shoving him to the ground. The crowd around them opened up, a few girly shrieks of horror sounding from around the two as they knocked into a long dining table near the front of house, a large bowl of punch wobbling precariously momentarily, looking like it might just right itself. Billy grabbed the front of Steve’s shirt, dragging his head to settle right against the table, and wound back his arm to give him a nice punch right, square in the middle of his face. The bowl teetered over, sloshing across the table and everywhere on the floor. It painted Steve’s white shirt pink as it splashed against his back.

“Steve, get up!” Someone shouted, and Billy resented the words. Steve fucking Harrington wouldn’t be getting up any time soon if it were up to him. He wound back up and punched him again, hearing something crack and laughing wickedly as Harrington bobbed back up and groaned, sputtering blood.

Harrington broke his hold, lashing out at him with a little more liveliness than he was used to seeing, and Billy drew back momentarily to avoid the strike. Harrington kicked out from his position half collapsed on the ground, catching Billy in the knee and making him stagger momentarily, before he was giving up the high ground and tackling Steve right onto the carpet.

“I’ve got her!” A voice screamed above the chaos, but Billy barely heard it over the loud rush of his blood flow in his ears. He grabbed the front of Steve’s shirt with his left hand as he reared up and cracked him across the face with his right fist. Steve’s head snapped back, but he still popped back up, spitting blood into Billy’s face as he clawed pathetically at the hand that grabbed the collar of his shirt tightly.

“Holy shit!” A voice screamed shrilly, the pitch breaking just slightly in its prepubescent state, “Steve! Move!!”

Billy looked up just in time to watch a body fling over the banister and collide right on top of him, making his head snap forwards, his neck rebounding around like a rubber band snapping back into form. He saw stars momentarily, before his vision cleared enough for him to find himself sandwiched between two bodies, with Harrington’s bloody face eyeballing him with an expression of strangled pain. Steve hacked blood across his face, a red string of saliva splattering across his vision, making Billy squeeze his eyelids shut to avoid getting it in his eyes. Ugh, that was fucking disgusting.

“Holy shit!” Another person shouted, and Billy was almost positive that it was Maxine, “Billy, incoming!”

He was already clawing his way out of the bodies, before another crash sounded, the splintering of wood meeting his ears, and then more weight was dropped onto the pile of bodies in the entry way. Billy wheezed against the heaviness that was crushing him, and Harrington, still completely smashed beneath him, sputtered, looking purple in the face. He might have been dying, actually, Billy realized belatedly. Good. It was what he deserved. The kid-diddling sicko.

“I think my leg’s broken!” A masculine voice wailed out shrilly, and if his tone of voice was anything to go by, Billy suspected it was as well, “That fucking bitch broke my leg!!”

Billy watched as a small hand appeared before his eyes, poking out from all the limbs above him and wiggling around, jangling with all the glittery jewelry it was adorned with. He recognized that fucking hand, and his eyes narrowed as he fixed his gaze on it. It planted itself on the ground beside Steve Harrington’s head, before a small feminine groan was heard in his right ear as the weight at his back began to shift. 

“Shit, haven’t any of you motherfuckers heard of a diet?” Mandy Mueller’s breathless voice sounded right into his ear as she panted, clawing out from underneath the bodies above them. Billy really wasn’t all that surprised, listening to all the despairing moans of pain, and then hearing Mandy fucking Mueller’s judging tone on top of it all, sounding like she hadn’t just dropped off a balcony. She was a goddamn wrecking ball of a human. She climbed into a closet to end up on the roof of house, wound up nearly dying from falling off said roof, and then dived right off a second floor balcony—all in one goddamn night, and it wasn’t even close to over yet. She was such a troublesome bitch, honestly. He loved it, but also, he was going to _fucking_ kill her once he escaped this goddamn dog pile.

Mandy slid out of the pile above him, and he definitely spotted her lacy little underwear as she crawled out from above his head, her tight little skirt riding up and exposing her whole ass to his eyes. Steve’s eyes widened as he watched her go as well, before she was standing and pulling down her skirt with a wiggle of her hips. Billy gaped, and Steve made a sound of distress from beneath him. That little bitch just got up like it was nothing! She righted her jacket, popping her collar and dusting herself off as the crowd eyed her with blatant bafflement. Billy really couldn’t blame them.

“Mandy fucking Mueller, you piece of shit!” A voice roared, and everyone in the pile began to try to escape, all the bodies wiggling as one, jarring Billy and Steve beneath them. Billy caught an elbow to the face, and a hand planted itself right onto Steve’s forehead as everyone squirmed above them. Fuck! Billy was gritting his teeth as he endured the weight, “You’re gonna fucking pay for what you did to my little sister, you little cocktease!”

“Chuck fucking Radner!” Mandy called right back in the same tone, her jewelry chiming as she waved her arms around, “Your little sister’s a whore, and your little brother’s a punk, and I’m gonna make you my bitch before this night is over, Bitch!!”

Jesus fucking Christ, Mandy Mueller had a big fucking mouth on her that was going to get her killed. It was a huge fucking turn on, but still. It would probably get her killed. Or at least help her get her ass kicked in the long run. Billy writhed his way out of the pile, leaving Steve and a few other guys collapsed in a pile of mangled limbs and splintered wood. He tried to follow Mueller’s lead by just dusting himself off, but promptly stumbled once he stood upright, his legs feeling stiff and rickety. His shoulders and neck popped when he righted his jacket, and he gave a pained grunt from the back of his throat. Jesus Christ, how the fuck did Mueller bounce back the way she did? She really was a crazy bitch.

“Oh, my God! Billy, do something!” Billy heard Max call out, and it drew his attention to the scene before him, Mandy being held by each arm as Chuck Radner struck out, landing two sequential hits to her stomach. She bowed over, hunching in on herself before she kicked out with both legs, heaving her weight against the two boys holding her and bucking. Her feet met Radner’s pelvis and launched him right across the room. 

Billy rose his brows, before he was lumbering over and winding up his arm. His fist met the side of one guy’s face, sending his neck snapping sideways and having him drop the hold he had on Mueller. She wasted no time, flinging out her free arm and smacking the other guy across the face. Her strike was open-handed, and the sound it made when it landed reminded him of a strike of lightning. Billy grinned maniacally when he heard it. The guy’s head snapped to the side, and he staggered back, clutching the side of his face as Mandy followed up by punching him right in the groin, making him collapse with shout of pain.

Mandy whirled around, eyes glittering and face flushed as she beamed wickedly in his direction, panting out, “Good lookin’ out, Hargrove!”

And then she was strutting across the room towards Chuck Radner as he staggered to his feet. She squared up with him, letting Radner push forward with a few missed punches, before she was dancing back, grabbing a beer bottle from someone’s hands and smashing it over Radner’s head. 

“Get glassed, Bitch!” She screeched, her sunny tone she just used with him long gone as Radner dropped. She stomped her boot twice onto his face with the opportunity she had, before someone was grabbing her around the waist and tackling her, and all Billy could do was blink wordlessly as he watched her flop onto the ground, a guy grappling with her from his position between her knees as he tried to pin her.

“Mueller!” A voice shouted from beside him, drawing him out of his trance and calling him to action. Billy briefly looked over to see Steve wrestling on the ground with another nameless friend of Chuck Radner, before he was clocked right across the back of the head with something, the sounds of pottery shattering ringing right in his ears. Billy winced, shaking out his hair as he spun on his heel and hit the guy behind him with all he had, following him to the ground and laying into him murderously.

“You really gonna sneak up on a guy and hit him from the back, huh?! Should’ve made sure you hit me harder, Shithead, that was your only chance!” Billy crowed from his position above the guy, continuing to punch him. He landed four more strikes, before he was being tossed off, a body colliding with him and sending him sprawling across the floor.

Mandy’s face cleared before his vision, her bloodied lips right before his eyes, her gasping breaths fanning across his face and blowing back his disheveled hair from his forehead. He lost sight of her face as she tilted her chin sideways and looked back over her shoulder, kicking back with the heel of her boot, and catching a guy between the legs. He groaned and folded in half, dropping to his knees, and Mandy watched with a tense expression, her mouth a tight line and her feathered brows furrowed above her eyes. She licked her lips, turning to glance at him with a look that had a surge of electricity running down his spine. God, she looked perfect just like that. His blood roared under his skin, his entire body riding a hot wave of adrenaline, and even still, she found a way to make his whole being a live wire for her. Just her eyes alone could light him up inside like a goddamn wild fire. The look she was giving him was making him want to do something stupid.

Mandy frowned into his face as she loomed over him, and he couldn’t help but think that if her face was the last one he saw before he died, he’d die happy. His hips slotted snugly between her thighs, and he was nearly positive she had felt the way his dick jumped in his pants as his eyes scoured her form. He was sure he would be getting something nasty from her for it, too. He sat up preemptively, not wanting her to have any advantage over him as she lifted her hand toward his face, and he caught her wrist just before she made contact. In opposition to every thought he had previous, her hand simply swiped across his face, palm gliding up his cheek and fingertips dusting faintly over his eyelid, before she reached his hairline, her thumb following the edge of his forehead. His eyes fluttered closed as her fingers moved over his eye, and when he opened them again, she was pulling her hand away from his face, shaking off his limp grip, and wiping it on her black shirt with a look of mild disgust. 

“You had blood in your eye,” She explained with a curled lip, shattering the small moment he could have sworn they just had, “You’re gonna need some kind of shot for that, Hargrove.”

The breath that gusted out of him at her words rang deafeningly inside his head, and he blinked, the world coming back to him like a roaring storm. Things shattering and people screaming and cursing every direction. The fight escalated. It was no longer just Mandy Mueller and Chuck Radner, and it seemed like a lot of the party goers were taking swings. His breathing was rasping out of him as he took it all in. He couldn’t tell if his adrenaline was fading or hitting him full force. 

He looked back to Mueller to find her already climbing off him, hands grabbing at his collar as she anchored herself to get back on her feet. He found himself thoughtlessly putting his hand over hers to try and stall her for a just a moment longer. Her smaller hand was hot under his, and he realized belatedly that all of her was hot. She had his lap warmed up nicely, and he wanted nothing more than to be able to sink into every part of her. His other hand grabbed the back of her head before she knew what was happening, her silken strands of hair slipping through his fingers as he craned his neck towards her, trying to catch her lips. She caught on at the last minute, avoiding him by tilting down her chin and jerking her head just slightly to the left, and he ended up kissing the side of her cheek instead. He groaned at the rejection, pressing his forehead into her hair nuzzling the side of her head wantonly, before she was out of his lap and looking down at him with a look of confusion that involved furrowed brows and a scrunched up nose. 

She placed her hands on her hips as he pushed himself to his feet after her, “What the fuck?”

“What?” He questioned innocently, as if the last five seconds never even happened. He was planning on forgetting the rejection. He had gotten reckless. The world was coming at him too fast, and he was riding too high on adrenaline to be thinking clearly. She was just so warm and fucking perfect. The look on her face was too pretty, and he had her right in his lap already. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and he had been dying for one fucking opportunity all goddamn night. Just any opening, really, but Queenie was always so fucking quick on the uptake. Smart little bitch. He just wanted a taste of her, and she was making it so _fucking_ difficult.

“Ugh!” She choked out, her face flushing as she stomped her foot in his direction, “You’re just so fucking backwards, I can’t take it!”

“Hey, Bitch!” A voice shouted from Mandy’s right and Billy’s left as they faced one another in the middle of the chaos, before a fist was appearing from the crowd and slamming into the side of Mueller’s face. She dropped to the ground with a clatter, and Billy was moving on the person before he even saw the body that the arm was attached to. His feet stepped over Mandy’s unconscious form, before he was swinging a fist into Chuck Radner’s face. His first strike connected with Radner’s nose and had a gush of blood spewing from his face as he staggered back from the blow, eventually tumbling to the floor gracelessly. 

Climbing onto Radner, knees planting themselves on either side of him, Billy hit him with all he had. His frustration was at a crescendo. Crafty Mandy Mueller foiling his plans once again, Maxine sneaking out of the house to look for Steve Harrington of all people, and Chuck fucking Radner ruining the party for everyone—they all added up. Billy couldn’t get a fucking break. He just wanted to let off some fucking steam, and the entire world was trying to ruin his good time. He felt like a boiling pot—if he didn’t let it out already, he would just fucking explode and burn down the entire fucking house. Each time his fist connected with Radner’s face felt like a breath of fresh air, and before he knew it, his gasping breaths became wicked, wheezing laughter. 

Chuck Radner groaned, choking on his own blood, and Billy watched it bubble from his reddened lips with malicious joy, before he punched him again. Radner tried to knee him in the balls from his position beneath him, and Billy pivoted his weight to one knee, sliding partially off him and bringing his other foot up to plant itself flat of the floor so he could crouch right out of Radner’s reach. 

“Steve!!” A few voices cried out pathetically, one sounding distinctly like Maxine’s, and Billy’s head snapped in the direction of the sound, hand posed to strike, hanging mid-air, as he spotted the annoying group of middle school boys Max had cozied up to all trying to battle away three guys kicking Steve Harrington’s ass. Maxine took a whack to the center of face, and Billy’s nostrils flared as he watched it happen, before he was rearing up off of Radner, eyes trained on the face of the guy who just hit his little shit of a stepsister. 

He pushed Radner back onto the ground as he tried to get up, preparing to give him one last hit, before Mandy was appearing out of seemingly nowhere, eyes narrowed and teeth bared as she smacked him on the face with a desk lamp, the electrical chord flying out and whipping at Billy’s shins. 

“Guess who’s back, Bitch!!” She screamed, whacking Radner right across the face, and Billy watched her lay Radner out for only one moment longer, committing the vengeful look on her face to his memory, before he sprung into action, prowling towards Harrington’s staggering form as he struggled to avoid the sequential strikes coming from all three boys that had singled him out.

Billy growled as he closed in on the group, grumbling without really meaning to, before he was winding up and socking the closest boy, his head snapping away as his arms dropped and his eyes blinked stupidly at nothing in particular. Billy gave him another hit, right to the stomach, before kneeing him and watching him drop to the floor in a crumpled ball of limbs. He threw his head back and cackled at the pained sound the guy made, before he was turning his attention on Harrington as he distractedly squared up with another person, “Hey, King Steve, do you like getting your ass kicked, or what?”

Harrington yanked himself out of the hold one guy had on his head, punching him right in the throat, before he was turning his reddened face towards Billy to yell, “Where the hell is Mandy?! I’m gonna kill her!”

Billy’s brows jumped toward his hairline, his face pulling up with wicked glee as he threw his head back and laughed to the heavens. The boy Billy was fighting took the opportunity to smash a fist into his face in his distraction, and Billy bobbed up with an even broader grin, before he was giving it right back to him. He took him down with relative ease, and stretched his fingers when he was done, barely noticing the dull throb of pain that came with it. 

As Steve finished the guy he was grappling with, he stood, turning to Billy with a half-assed look of gratitude and a nod, “Thanks.”

“Yeah,” Billy replied shallowly, and they both looked at each other for one long tortuous moment, eyes shifting uneasily as they waited for the other to make a move.

Their staring contest was broken by a gurgling sound and the clacking of boots, before both boys whipped their heads around to spy Mandy Mueller dragging Chuck Radner along the floor by an electrical chord around his neck. She tottered backwards, teeth bared as she struggled with Radner’s weight, pulling the chord taught and making Radner’s face turn a particularly ugly shade of purple. 

“Jesus Christ!” Someone shouted as she passed, dragging the squirming Radner after her with a determined look on her face, “She’s gonna kill him!”

“Mandy!” Steve admonished, and Mueller’s head snapped up, the cord loosening just slightly. Chuck Radner coughed pathetically, gasping like a fish out of water as he tried to claw himself free. Mandy furrowed her brows in Steve’s direction as he gestured with dramatic sweeps of his arms, “You can’t just kill people when you’re visiting my house! I don’t need any more problems right now!”

Just as Harrington said those words, Billy spied the flashing blue and red lights outside the house. 

Well, it was official. Steve Harrington was a no good fucking jinx.


	15. Secret Keeping: The Dos and Don'ts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve Harrington and Mandy Mueller have big mouths and loose lips. It's not a surprise that they manage to let a few secrets slip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay ppl here we go lol some plot, some revelations, some gross rape-culture, and some more fun times with the teens of hawkins high lmao.
> 
> i'll put a trigger warning here: TW!!! sensitive topics (rape/assault) will be offhandedly mentioned by GROSSLY insensitive teenage boys lol. nothing is written in graphic detail, so you're safe..... for now, lol. tbh, I don't like even writing about sexual assault b/c it makes me uncomfortable to even think of how insensitive (and flippant) ppl are about it. It's so ingrained into my culture that it kinda disgusts me so. there ya go. we're all suffering together on this one, dears lol
> 
> also, ps, my headcanon is that hopper was shipped out during the vietnam war (tbh i think that is canon??? i think i read that somewhere??? idek sorry) so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ that is referenced very briefly somewhere in here 
> 
> and as usual, AAAAAAA <3!! I love you all so much! can i tell you how much i love talking to you guys?!?!?!? UUGGHHH <3! honestly, it makes me heart feel so full! I love the headcanons! the hypothesis over plot! the random guesses ppl have for mandy's past! lmao, you guys really are gr8! <3!!
> 
> also this chap feels REALLY long to me tbh ugh sorry in advance! happy reading and good luck, friends! <3

“Fuck!! Someone called the cops!” A voice broke through the chaos, and most of the teens in the house dropped whatever they were doing to begin looking for an exit. The violence turned into panic, and Billy was jostled away from Harrington and Mueller in the pandemonium.

Around him, the crowd broke off, people running past him in every direction, some running toward the front door, while most fled toward the back of the house. Billy found himself getting shoved toward the backyard as he craned his neck above the crowd in search for Maxine. The little shit just managed to disappear without a fucking trace, even her dopey little friends were nowhere to be found.

“Shit,” Billy growled as he pushed his way against the crowd, colliding almost immediately into Tommy, who stopped him in his tracks.

“Hargrove, man! Cops are here!” He exclaimed, and Billy gritted his teeth.

“Yeah, I know, but have you seen a short, goofy-looking redhead around? Kinda a bitch?” Billy asked heatedly, and Tommy rose his brows in reply, Carol appearing by his side and trying to tug him along.

“C’mon!” Carol urged, grabbing his elbow and tugging, but Billy stopped her by grabbing his other arm and jerking his face back to his.

“Well?” Billy insisted, “Have you, or not?!”

“I didn’t know you were into redheads, man,” Tommy slurred, obviously drunk and Billy pursed his lips, refraining from socking him across the face, “I hear they are freaks in bed—“

“No, you idiot!” Billy shouted over the commotion around them, “I mean my stepsister!!”

“You fuck your stepsister?” Tommy’s face scrunched up, disgust coloring his features, _“Dude.”_

“Jesus Christ,” Billy grumbled, shoving Tommy away from him as he marched back into the house, leaving with a call of, “You’re a fucking retard!”

Storming back into the house, Billy flew up the stairs, taking them two at a time to search for any sign of Maxine. He stomped down the hall, flinging open doors, checking closets and under beds, only to come up empty. He turned back the way he came, hopping down the stairs quickly, side-stepping fallen picture frames and shattered vases along the way. 

Coming back downstairs, he slid into the kitchen as he saw a cop dragging along two boys with bloodied faces towards the entry way. He ripped open the kitchen pantry in hopes to lay low there, only to find two drunk girls sitting on the floor and sniffling pitifully. How fucking depressing, Billy thought.

“Hey,” He hissed down to them, “Have you seen a short, goofy-looking redhead?”

One girl looked up at him, audibly wiping her nose with the back of her hand, and Billy withheld from grimacing, “With big eyes?”

“Yeah, sometimes,” Billy nodded, “Where’d she go?”

“I saw her with a colored boy,” Billy sneered at the vague mention of the Sinclair kid. Of fucking course Max would be running around with that boy in the middle of the night. She really had no clue how badly she was ruining Billy’s chance at popularity, “In the garage.”

“Who uses the word colored anymore?” He found himself saying aloud, looking down to the watery-eyed girl with a sneer, “Do you even know what decade we’re in?”

And with those parting words, he promptly shut the door.

“I fucking hate it here,” Billy announced miserably as he marched off toward the garage, “I’m gonna kill Max.”

“Hey, you!” A voice shouted from behind him as he sped down the darkened, empty hall towards the garage, and he swung open the first door he got to, hopping inside just as Chuck Radner sprinted down the hall, a black cop hot on his heels, followed by another wearing a pair of glasses. 

“Hey,” A voice whispered right behind him, a breath gusting by his right ear, “Find your own hiding spot, Shitbag.”

Billy recognized that voice, and whirled around, causing something to fall over with the confined space. The person trapped with him yelped, stumbling sideways into him.

“Queenie,” He grinned, and Mandy’s breath fanned across his lips as he said it, a small gust that wavered just slightly.

“Shh,” She shushed, “Not so loud, Idiot.”

“Fancy meeting you here,” He crooned, and Mandy tweaked his exposed nipple in the dark, pinching it harshly and making him let out a pitiful, stunted, “Ouch, Bitch.”

He swatted her hands off his chest, and Mandy huffed out, “God, shut up already. Cry Baby.”

“Cry—“ Billy paused his indignation for a moment as the sounds of footsteps returned, the sound of a struggle breaking out, and Mandy’s body bumped into him momentarily, her hand grabbing at his jacket to stabilize herself. His eyes began to adjust to the dark, and he realized he was in some kind of coat closet, an entire umbrella stand being held up by Mueller’s leg as she stopped it from falling. He helped her, nudging back to standing with a knee as the sounds of Chuck Radner’s belligerent shouting left the hall. 

Mandy looked up, eyes glancing over his shoulder to the small slit at the bottom of the door, before she was trying to shift around him.

“Hey,” He stopped her movement, grabbing the side of her head before she could escape and making her startle and her attention jump back to his looming visage, “Have you seen my stepsister?”

Mandy looked to him, eyes widening, “The redhead? Is that what she is—your stepsister?” 

“Yes, her,” Billy confirmed, hand moving down to the side of Mandy’s neck as he loosened his grip. The touch was soft, barely even there really, and still, he could feel the slight jump of her pulse under skin. It was kind of distracting, and he found himself running a thumb over the thrumming skin without really meaning to. 

“Uh, probably a few minutes ago,” Mandy shrugged, swallowing slightly and twitching away from his touch, “She was with Mike Wheeler—Nancy Wheeler’s brother.”

“They’re friends, apparently,” Billy supplied, making Mandy shrug.

“Lame, but okay. Whatever floats her boat, I guess,” Mandy stated flippantly, and any other time, Billy probably would have found her delivery pretty amusing, but right now, she was talking too slow for the amount of information he was trying to get out of her in a time crunch.

“Where’d you see her?” Billy asked, his eyes boring into her, and Mandy met his gaze levelly, lips pursing.

Mandy sighed, “Through the kitchen window. She was riding off into the woods with a bunch of nerdy boys. Lucky little shit, I don’t even have a ride. Chuck Radner slashed my tires.”

Billy groaned, dropping his hand from its position cradling Mueller’s face as he tossed his head back briefly, “Jesus Christ.”

“Wait, is that why you’re still here? You’re looking for her?” Mandy asked, jerking back from him to eye him bewilderedly, “Seriously?”

Billy didn’t know if he liked the look on her face, and grumbled out defensively, “Well, why the hell are you still here, then?”

“Uh, my tires are slashed! Flat tires don’t get you very far, Dummy!” Mueller hissed in his face, making him raise his brows down at her.

“So you hid here? There’s a million other places, Queenie,” Billy questioned, looking to her suspiciously, sensing something was amiss without really know what.

Mandy crossed her arms, looking away willfully, “Well, Chuck Radner got loose, and then tried to strangle me, so I wanted to go to the kitchen to get a knife, but he beat me there, so I had to take a little detour to this closet.”

“And he’s still in the house, looking for you and getting himself caught by the cops,” Billy finished for her, raising his brows down at her as she shrugged, eyes darting anywhere but his face, and if it weren’t for the imminent threat of getting caught out by the cops, it would have been the perfect moment to just fucking kiss her already. Limited space, perfumed fancy clothes, and Mueller looking too fucking appetizing with her wild hair and dangerous eyes. 

“Yeah, what a loser,” Mandy agreed, shrugging and glancing up at him finally, and Billy just wanted to do it. So fucking bad. Mandy narrowed her eyes at him briefly, and he found his fingers twitching at his sides, wanting nothing more than to run his fingers all the way up her bare arms to her exposed cleavage.

“Where’s your jacket?” He finally questioned, his voice clipped as he looked for something to distract himself. He probably should have left already, and Mueller was looking over his shoulder like she was thinking the same thing to herself.

Mandy glanced at him from beneath thick lashes, “Had to lose it. Made me too easy to grab.”

Billy found himself smirking at the vengeful look on her face, “Hm.”

Mandy gave him a warning look, eyes catching his briefly, and Billy found his smirk widening in reply.

“What?” He asked into the quiet, and Mandy’s brows furrowed on her face.

“I’m leaving now,” Mandy announced plainly, tilting her head to the side, “Through the back. Come with me or don’t, but I’m—“

Her voice was cut off by a thunderous call, “Mueller! When I get my hands on you, you’re dead!”

Mandy stilled before him, eyes glancing over Billy’s shoulder, before she was trying to shove him out of the way. Billy grappled with her briefly as she pushed against his shoulders to move him, before he caught her by the elbows and pushed her back into the plethora of coats in the closet, fighting against her as she continued trying to nudge at him with her legs and hips.

“Hargrove!” She whispered heatedly, trying to yank her arms from his grip, “Let me go! If you don’t want to get caught, now is the time to go!”

“How—“ Billy couldn’t even get one word out before she was panting out.

“Radner’s being escorted by two cops right now,” Mandy’s breaths gusted hotly against his skin, and he blinked as it rushed over his face, catching the scent of something fruity and distinctly alcoholic on her breath, “That only leaves one more, and if we split up, there’s no way he’ll catch both of us! C’mon!”

“How do you know there’s only three cops here?” He asked, loosening his grip, but still not letting her go, and Mandy shifted restlessly on her feet, eyes darting over his shoulder impatiently.

“Uh,” She began, her voice sounding jumpy and on edge, “Um, I—uh, well—I saw three cars earlier when they drove up.”

“Alright,” Billy said, dropping her arms, and Mandy looked at him with anticipation, “I’ll leave through the garage, you leave through the back. We’ll meet up somewhere in the forest.”

Because, and Billy would definitely deny this, he really did not want to be wandering around in a forest at night. Fuck that, seriously. And even though Mandy Mueller caused more problems than she could solve, she was still kicking regardless of how many times people nearly killed her. Billy was starting to think she might have had one of the most remarkable survival instincts he had ever encountered; so, really, Mandy may have been the best candidate to get lost in the woods with. The girl simply defied the odds against her, every single time.

“Got it,” Mueller nodded firmly, before snatching his sleeve as he turned to leave, “Also, if I don’t get to tell you this—“

Billy’s eyes snapped back to her face, eyes taking in her even facial expression. Was this going to be some grand reveal about how badly she wanted him? That she knew it was him sending those tapes all along? That she actually—

“I just want you to know that I think it’s total bullshit that you gave yourself the garage when it’s literally, like, ten feet away,” Mandy announced snootily, and Billy found himself blinking down at her frustratedly. God, she was so irritating, “And I have to leave through the backyard.”

Billy borrowed her annoying tone for his next words, “Which is, like, fourteen feet away.”

“Alright then,” Mandy nodded, eyeing him snippily, “I see how it is.”

“Jesus,” Billy sighed exasperatedly, “You take the garage, then!”

“No, I got the backyard,” Mandy feigned uncaring as she looked away from him, and Billy was so irritated with her, he grabbed her face between both his hands, making her jerk in his hold as brought his face closer to hers. He locked his gaze on hers, raising his brows pointedly.

“You want to leave through the garage? Huh, Queenie?” He rasped out, his hands shaking her slightly, and she frowned, brows furrowing in his direction. She didn’t reply, only glancing down at his mouth briefly in a way the made him realize just how close their faces were. He licked his lips, shifting on his feet restlessly, “Well? Answer the question, ‘cause I don’t have time for games.”

Mandy’s bright gaze settled back on his eyes as she looked to him witheringly, “I don’t like it when you grab my face, Hargrove.”

“That’s not an answer,” He replied, straight-faced, already knowing that before she even said it. She didn’t like her face touched, and didn’t like it when he slapped her ass, and didn’t really like it when he looked in her direction at all—but sometimes, he needed to get her fucking attention, and she made it really fucking difficult to get that from her any other way besides doing something that pissed her off.

Her chest heaved at his reply, her lips quivering as she worked herself up to her next words, “Bite me.”

It wasn’t what he thought she was going to say, or even close to anything he could’ve imagined her saying in that moment, and without warrant, a small chuckle escaped him, before he was drawling out exasperatedly, _“Mandy.”_

“You’re an asshole,” Mandy announced unnecessarily, her voice quiet, but nonetheless acidic, “Now, let me go, Asshole. I’m leaving through the backyard.”

Billy sighed, releasing her and stepping back, bumping himself right into the door, and she stepped forward, body warm next to him as she yanked the door knob. He stumbled back into the dimmed hallway, Mueller following him, her head jerking towards the mouth of the corridor that glowed with the entryway lights.

She said nothing to him as she took off, not even bothering to glance back at him until she was at the glowing archway. Peaking once into the lit space, Mandy swung her head back toward him, eyeing him pointedly and waving him off before she was moving again. Billy watched her slink out of sight, before storming off toward the garage. He stomped further away from Mueller, swinging open the garage door, only to find himself face to face with a bespectacled police officer.

“Hey!” He shouted, and Billy rose his brows, promptly closing the door. He took off down the hall, stumbling back when he saw Mandy streak by, blonde hair flying up behind her.

“ _Sheeeeeeeeeit!”_ She shrieked as she flashed by, boots thumping against the hardwood as she thundered towards the backyard.

“Hey, get back here, Blondie!!” A booming voice exclaimed, a large policeman storming after her, and Billy stopped in his tracks, putting his hands up and turning around once he realized that there was no way he was making it out through the back anymore.

The cop was breathing heavy when he got to him mere seconds later, and he grabbed him by the back of his collar as he tugged him back through the garage to the driveway. A line-up of at least six people, all bloodied and bruised, were sat against the police cruisers.

“Gimme your hands,” The officer demanded, and Billy obliged, setting his wrists before him so the cop could cuff him. 

He was pushed into seating, and Billy plopped down miserably against the police cruiser, eyes darting to his left to see just who the hell was cuffed beside him. It wasn’t Chuck Radner, but it was someone else he could have sworn he knocked out earlier. It was kind of hard to tell with all the swelling and blood.

The sounds of crashing and screams were heard from within the house, and Billy already knew that Mueller was breaking more shit inside Harrington’s home. He looked around, unable to see Harrington anywhere, and pursed his lips. In typical rich-boy fashion, Steve Harrington avoided culpability. What bullshit, Billy thought to himself. 

His own thoughts were broken by the horrific shrieking of Mandy Mueller as she was dragged through the doorway of Steve’s house. She kicked out, sending gravel flying into the air, before promptly dropping all her weight onto the ground, making the cop tugging her along stagger slightly.

“Hey! Get up, Brat!” He shouted down at her, and Mandy lashed out, making him curse under his breath and heave her up over a shoulder. She squirmed, screaming shrilly and kicking her heels into the air, her arms already bound in cuffs, which Billy was honestly shocked by, given the amount of fight she was putting up. He was more than curious as to how the officer managed that one.

“Hey, Chief!” The bespectacled cop called, trailing after the man as he passed by all of the boys sitting on the ground, Mandy tossed over his shoulder, worming around and shouting obscenities the whole while.

“I’m driving her,” The Chief replied gruffly, tromping off towards an SUV further away, “She’s a suspect in another case.”

Billy rose his brows, cocking his head as he watched him walk off, eyes wary. Mueller was red-faced, head dangling upside down, and screeching out through gritted teeth. Whatever the hell she was suspected of doing, Billy was positive it must have been some serious shit.

“Dumb bitch,” A boy beside him sneered, his voice echoing in the back of Billy’s skull, making Billy swivel his neck around to glance at him briefly, “Always starting shit.”

Billy arched his brows, but otherwise did not reply.

“Shut up, Bradley,” Harrington’s voice called, and Billy startled slightly, squinting as he tried to pin-point exactly where it came from. It sounded like it was right behind him, and Billy found himself craning his neck upwards to spy the previously silent Steve Harrington in the open window of the police car, his face looking down at the boys on the floor, “You come into my house, and start a fight, and still—you wanna blame Mueller. Haven’t you grown up at all, Dude? Like, seriously? You’re over twenty now, and still picking fights with high school girls. You call yourself a man?”

“Kiss my ass, Harrington,” The boy, Bradley, retorted, “Carmichael’s gone for two years, and you start thinking you’re hot shit. Fuck you.”

Billy looked up towards Harrington with an expectant look. Harrington glared in his direction briefly before settling his gaze back on Brad’s disfigured face.

“Matthew Carmichael was an asshole,” Harrington retorted coldly, “No one misses him.”

Ooh, Billy knew _that_ name, and found himself glancing between both boys with great anticipation. He had heard that fucking name in passing enough, and seen Mueller blow up just at the sound of it, and he was undeniably curious as to who the fuck this Carmichael guy actually was. 

“Bet Mandy does,” Bradley quipped mockingly, “Or parts of him, at least.”

“Bullshit,” Harrington fired back without a moment’s hesitation, and Billy looked between the two boys like he was watching a tennis match.

“Is it?” Brad sneered, before chuckling, and Billy rose a single, skeptical brow in the boy’s direction.

“Yeah,” Harrington answered snidely, “Because we both know that before you assholes all graduated, Mueller made sure to let you all know exactly how she felt when she tried killing all of you.”

Uh, what? Billy paused, brows raising comically high on his face before he was looking to Bradley ‘Whatever The Fuck His Last Name Was’ with a questioning glance.

“You seriously gonna joke about that? Tim still can’t hear loud sounds without losing his shit,” Bradley hissed, and Billy found himself snorting at the statement. He had no idea who the hell Tim was, or even why he still lost his shit over loud sounds, but knowing it had something to do with Mandy Mueller made it all so fucking hilarious.

“You guys tried to rape her!” Steve yelled from over Billy’s head, and Billy’s smile fell as the words echoed in his skull, “Are you serious?!”

“Oh, please,” Brad shrugged, and Billy found himself vacantly staring between him and Harrington, “She wanted Matt for so long before that.”

“Is that why you had to hold her down? She wanted him that bad? Screw you, man—” 

Now, it made sense. Billy looked forward again, eyes trained on the lines in the gravel Mueller had left as she dug in her heels. Trying to shove someone’s hand in a garbage disposal, locking someone in a freezer—it was revenge. Mueller’s violent anger at the mention of a name, and the way she looked at him when he grabbed at her face and loomed over her—panicky and ready for a fight. It all made sense now. 

Well, fuck.

Billy found himself sighing, eyes glancing to the truck Mueller was loaded into. Talk about a joy kill. He didn’t know if he could continue messing with her now that he knew this information. It took the fun out of it a little. It suddenly felt like all those mean looks she loved to give him weren’t even meant for him at all. He felt robbed of something he was too stupid to even name. Some ugly and rotten sensation clawed its way up into his throat, and Billy found his nostrils flaring as he swallowed it down thickly. He felt stifled, and irritated, and suddenly noticed the way he was wringing his wrists, rubbing the skin raw as he twisted his hands and made the metal pinch into his skin. He could barely feel the pain of it as his anger washed over him in rising waves.

Bradley, with his gross swollen face, was laughing up at Harrington, teeth bloodied as he grinned, “Bitch likes to play hard to get, you know how she is. God, let it go, it’s not like—“

“She was screaming! If I hadn’t walked in when I did—“ 

Steve’s words were enough that the waves of anger that were rushing Billy finally flooded over his entire head, leaving him in a hazy, red blur for a world. All he could see were those red-stained teeth in that big fucking mouth, and Mandy’s face in the back of his mind, defiant and willful as she stared up at him—and then her voice and the way it echoed in that empty bathroom, “I think a tooth might have come loose—“

And then, Billy got a bad idea.

With a heavy breath, he swung both his interlocked hands out, whacking Brad across the mouth from where he smirked up at Harrington. His head flew back on his neck and bonged against the metal of the car door as he gave a shout of pain, and Harrington gaped, chuckling slightly before smirking and nodding in Hargrove’s direction. Brad bent forward, choking before finally hacking up a clump of fibrous, red tissue and a stained tooth into his cupped hands. Blood ran from his nose as he looked disbelievingly in Billy’s direction, hands trembling before him as he realized what just left his mouth.

“Take a picture, Shithead,” Billy suggested, looking down at his bleeding knuckles that had been torn open by Brad’s teeth as the boy beside him stared at the side of his face furiously, “It lasts longer.”

Bradley made a gurgling sound as he snorted out a globule of blood that left a string of mucous red down his face before it splatted on the breast pocket of his flannel shirt.

“Hey! What the hell is the commotion over here?!” A cop asked as he stormed over towards them. Bradley pathetically clutched his tooth in his hand, looking to it with furrowed brows as the officer stopped before the three of them.

“Nothing, Officer,” Harrington announced innocently from above, “Just a leg cramp.”

Billy wanted to roll his eyes, but refrained for the sake of Harrington’s already fragile lie. 

“This guy fell off the upstairs balcony earlier,” Harrington continued, and Billy glanced back towards the cops with an expression of trained indifference.

“Does he need a hospital?” The cop questioned, brows knitting in the middle of his forehead and eyes widening down at the boys, “You okay there, son?”

Billy looked to Bradley forebodingly, eyes daring him to say a single fucking thing, and Harrington pointedly cleared his throat from above Brad’s head.

“Well, Tate?” Harrington questioned, looking down at Bradley, and Billy worked out that it must have been a last name. Bradley Tate—what a fucking name, Billy thought. It sounded like a serial killer’s name. 

“Yeah, fine,” Bradley Tate muttered wetly, blood dripping from his lips, “I’ll survive.”

If he kept talking like that, Billy thought wickedly, it wouldn’t be for much longer, though.

The cop before them placed his hands on his belt, adjusting it and nodding, “Alright then.”

How negligent, Billy thought with a cold smirk, eyes darting back to the guy beside him. Billy rubbed at his busted knuckles distractedly, wiping at the blood that dripped from the broken skin. Tate stared at him with violent intention gleaming in his eyes, his lips pursed, and Billy broke into a loud, wheezing cackle, tossing his head back before he looked back to Brad.

“You gonna do something?” Billy goaded, a wide grin on his face, “Huh? You wanna hit me? Then do it. Or are you some kinda fag, huh? You gonna do it or not, Pussy?”

“Who the fuck are you, huh?” The boy beside him sneered, “You new here, Faggot? You gotta be to stand up for Mandy fucking Mueller of all people—you’d know better otherwise. That fucking bitch had it coming. Still does.”

Billy grinned toothily as he drawled out, almost a little wistfully, “Yeah, she kinda does.”

Brad took an elbow to the temple that knocked him out cold, and as Billy righted himself languidly, wiping the slickness of his blood away with Bradley Tate’s clothes, Harrington exhaled noisily from above Billy’s head.

“What a douchebag,” Harrington muttered tiredly, shrugging slightly as Billy rolled his eyes skyward to look at him.

“What’d Mueller do?” Billy found himself asking as his eyes turned down once more, distracted momentarily by the stinging way the cotton of Tate’s shirt caught against his broken skin.

“Oh, well,” Harrington looked away as he thought, before he was shrugging, “She loaded his car up with fireworks.”

“What?” Billy spat, brows knitting as he turned his sharp gaze back onto Harrington above him, “I was talking about her being a suspect in whatever case that cop was talking about—what the hell—?”

“Oh,” Steve paused, chuckling slightly, “Right, I dunno.”

Billy squinted slightly, “Whose car did—?”

“Tim Langley,” Steve supplied without missing a beat, “You wouldn’t know him. He’s older. Graduated a few years ago. Mandy always said she was gonna ruin his life, and then—well, y’know, she stuck a bunch of fireworks under his seats. He closes the door, turns on the car, and then bang. Lost hearing in his right ear and everything. I still wonder how she managed to time it so well.”

Billy rose his brows, an incredulous laugh leaving him briefly before he was asking bewilderedly, _“What?”_

“Well, yeah,” Harrington shrugged, “You know Mandy.”

Steve said that like Billy hadn’t just arrived in Hawkins only a few months ago, and Billy’s brows pulled up with confusion, before he was humming in thought.

“Imaginative,” Billy found himself commenting, and Harrington snorted.

“That’s a word for it.”

* * *

Mandy Mueller was currently neck deep in some serious shit, and she did not like the situation she had found herself in at all. 

Hopper recognized her almost immediately once he arrived at the party. His mind had flashed with violent imagery—her naked, dirt-caked form shaking all over, her bowed spine and milky white eyes, her toothy grin and seizing laughter, and then the fiery explosion she became in the back seat of the Bronco. He had crashed after her abrupt departure that night, she saw in his mind—slamming into a tree, and nearly killing himself in the process. He survived, luckily unscathed besides the new pain in his neck he had to deal with every morning. His ego was more mangled than his body, actually—the few cops beneath him had began a new long-running joke about Russian honeypots and distracted driving.

Hopper was going to be a problem, Mandy knew. He knew that had been her that night, and she wouldn’t be able to convince him otherwise. He planned to wring the entire story right out of her, and Mandy was dreading it. She knew she was going to have to use her knowledge of Eleven’s existence when dealing with him, and the realization had a chagrinned kind of sobriety settling over her. She remembered him from the night Eleven brought her back to that little cabin in the creepy part of the woods, and Mandy planned to draw on all the information she could pick up from their relationship. 

The divorce, the dead garden, the little wild flower—Mandy was going to have to fucking play every card at her disposal. If she didn’t, she was highly likely to get shipped off back to the nuthouse if the cops called her parents, and she was not willing to risk that. 

Her mind regurgitated all her worst memories in a rush of cruel, inconvenient imagery. All her stupid decisions, and all the lies she should have told, and how fucking pathetic she had been as she screamed and begged and pleaded for someone to just _believe_ her. _Please,_ she had shrieked, her cheeks tear-stained and her vision blurred under her heavy, glistening eyelashes. _Please, please, please._ Please, don’t make her go, and please, don’t leave her here, and please, she was sorry, it was just a joke, and she hadn’t really meant it. Please, she wasn’t really crazy, and she didn’t belong here with all these broken, angry, screeching minds. She wasn’t one of these people, and she wasn’t crazy. Not then, anyway. Not completely, at least. Okay, well, maybe a little bit—but not any crazier than everyone else. Not enough to lock away.

That first night, as she laid in bed and stared at the wall, eyes tracing pictures in the rough, painted stonework in the ringing silence and all encompassing darkness, she had heard the first, terrible, guttural wailing of the other patients, and her heart echoed the call. Her circumstances settled heavy on her mind then, and distantly, she could still hear her own voice in her head, reminding her of one truth she could never fully accept: She was never going to get out of that place, and if she did, it wouldn’t be as the same person that had been dragged in. And that night, she had cried, mourning her freedom, and her life as she knew it, and real fucking shoes that actually had laces.

It had been so unjust, and so fucking _unfair._ She had lost so much time there, and had lost a part of her very soul, and nobody had even cared. Nobody had listened, and nobody had believed her. And Mandy knew how likely it was to happen all over again.

A coldness gnawed away at her stomach, and she bit her lip as she violently shoved her memories back into the deep, dark pit that they had clawed their way out of. She had no need for reminders. She knew her options: clever manipulation or inevitable imprisonment. Her rotten mind echoed starkly, terrifyingly clear and honest to an ugly degree— _they’d catch her dead before they put her in a straight jacket again._ So, she knew what she had to do, and she steeled her resolve.

If this cop thought he was gonna get shit out of her, he had another thing coming. She’d jump from the moving vehicle before telling him shit. 

“You gonna talk?” Hopper asked from the driver’s seat, and Mandy remained unresponsive, clenching her jaw, “I know it was you that night, Blondie. You started a fire that took over a week to fully contain, in November no less. You wanna tell me how you did that?”

No, Mandy really did not. Mandy couldn’t just _tell_ him all about astral projection, and nearly killing herself in her own stupidity as she teleported herself into the vacuum of deep space. That sounded fucking crazy, and even Mandy wouldn’t believe it if someone told her that story. It took, like, two hours, to get to the nearest Esprit store! Nobody would believe that she teleported into space with the time it took to blink a fucking eye!! It was absolutely insane!!!

“Are you from the lab?” He muttered, glancing over to her with narrowed eyes, “I won’t give you up, Kid, if that’s what you’re worried about, but you gotta be honest with me, ‘cause I feel like I’m going insane here.”

Mandy pinched her lips together, trying to cross her bare arms to no avail with the cuffs on her, before giving up huffily and turning her face to stare out of the window petulantly. She was not answering shit! Mandy couldn’t say any of it aloud. She was a—well, the only word she could come up with was ‘freak’. Mandy was a freak of nature. The laws of physics did not apply with her. She was unnatural. Supernatural, even, and Mandy definitely could not say any of that aloud. It felt wrong. _She_ felt wrong.

“You not gonna talk?” He grumbled out, looking between her and the road as he took a right turn, “Is that how it is? Well, how about I call some of my friends down at Hawkins Lab, and they tell me just who the hell you are, huh? How would you feel about that?”

Mandy remained silent, fidgeting her fingers slightly at his words. Her eyes began stinging, her panic settling in as she tried to grasp at her fraying edges to keep herself together. She knew she was in trouble before, but Hawkins Lab was a _government_ facility, and the mention of the lab had a sudden, terrifying epiphany hitting her.

Mandy now realized where Eleven came from.

The dark, and the needles, and the small rooms, and the coldness on her bare feet—terror, isolation, and dread—all surrounded by the never-ending treeline. She remembered it all from El’s mind. Mandy didn’t want all those things—she refused to be like Eleven. She wouldn’t be experimented on like some fucking rat. Mandy did her time already. She wasn’t going to be locked away by some government-funded nerds. 

In a flare of overwhelming irritation and under the influence of a sneakily built-up hysteria, Mandy found herself biting out stupidly, “How could you make friends with the people who kept Eleven against her will? I thought you cared about her.”

The truck was just pulling to a stop before the police station, and Hopper put the vehicle in park, blinking bewilderedly through the windshield for a moment, before he turned to her, visage taught.

“What did you just say?” He gritted out, his voice a low, warning thing that reminded her of the way a rattlesnake coiled up and shook its tail before a dangerous strike.

Mandy met his gaze, her own voice lost at the deadly tone he used, but her icy eyes alight with defiance. Mandy pursed her lips, eyes narrowing in Hopper’s direction as he spoke, louder this time, “Run that name by me again, Blondie. I don’t think I heard you right.”

Mandy tore her gaze away from his manic eyes, looking out of the windows to spy a herd of teens being dragged and hauled into the police station, two by two. 

She looked back to Hopper, her lower lip quivering just slightly as she worked up her nerve, before spitting out in a quick lash of her tongue, “Eleven.”

And before Mandy had said that name, that little girl was a mere ghost. Some small part of Mandy still chewed on the idea that Eleven wasn’t even real, that she was some small part of her consciousness that she talked to when things were troubling and nothing made sense. Eleven was only a half-baked reality, until the exact moment she watched Jim Hopper’s face contort into a vicious, tightlipped rage. His mind was terrified, furious, and desperate, and Mandy had never felt more worried for her own life. Hopper’s emotions were a deadly concoction, and as he turned off the lights and shut of the engine, all Many could think was that he was going to kill her. He was capable, and he had done it before, and the idea flashed in his mind briefly, and all of those facts had her bones rattling around without her own control.

“Where did you hear that name?!” His vitriolic voice was quick like the flash of a whip, and Mandy jumped, drawing her shoulders up to her ears, “Huh?! Answer me!”

Mandy let a small whimper escape her—the loudness of his voice paired with the dark, violent thoughts in his mind were making her feel so terrible and helpless. She turned in her seat, wrists bound as she tried to wiggle the door handle, but he reached across her back and shut the door with a slam, snagging her wrists and yanking her back. Mandy fell back into the seat, and cried out, trying to jerk out of his larger grasp.

“Sh-sh—“ Mandy couldn’t get her words out, her shudders passing through her in teeth-chattering waves, “She—“

“Well, c’mon, Blondie!” He shouted into her face, and her eyes welled up with tears against her will, “You could talk just fine before, right?! C’mon, talk!!”

Vision blurred and pulse jumping hotly in her fingers, Mandy answered in a small voice, “Sh-she told me.”

Hopper’s mind paused—the sounds of gunshots and screams dying off momentarily, and all Mandy could pick up on was a tangle of confusion in the man’s head.

She heard the question he posed to ask ring out in his mind before he even said it, “ _Who_ told you?”

Mandy looked away from his face, too scared to look into his eyes and see anymore bad thoughts as she muttered meekly, “Eleven told me her name, and she told me… about Mike Wheeler… um, and uh—“

“What?” Hopper spat out with blatant bewilderment, releasing her bound wrists and boring his gaze into the side of her face.

That seemed to get his attention, Mandy realized, because anyone could tell him about Eleven being a lost experiment with mind-fuck powers, but not too many knew about her connection to Mike Wheeler. And truly, Mandy suddenly thought, that was the only thing Eleven _actually_ told her about. Eleven had no life outside that little cabin, and the only thing she truly had for herself was Mike Wheeler. He was her everything. The realization pierced deep into Mandy’s heart, leaving behind a lingering moroseness.

Mandy looked at him then, glancing just briefly, before she nodded tentatively, sniffling and wiping her face, “Yeah.”

“Okay then,” Hopper bit out suspiciously, “Where the hell did you two meet?”

“Um…” Mandy paused, eyes slowly drifting to his face as she contemplated how likely it was he’d even believe her, “In—Uh, in a dream.”

Hopper leaned back in his seat, expelling a long breath from his nose as he echoed with tentative incredulousness, “In a dream?”

Mandy cleared her throat awkwardly, eyeing him warily, “Yes.”

Hopper looked to her sharply at her confirmation, before he nodded, “You really disappeared that night, didn’t you? The doctor’s said I sustained a head injury, but I was almost positive—I could have sworn I saw you disappear—vanish—like a goddamn magic trick.”

Mandy couldn’t stop the watery smile his wording brought her, before she nodded, her own throat seizing just slightly in one last attempt to stop her from vocally confirming his suspicions, “Mhm.”

“Holy shit,” Hopper stated plainly, his gruff voice toneless, “How?”

Mandy shook her head, “I don’t know how to explain it.”

Hopper adjusted in his seat restlessly, “Okay, then tell me how you met the girl.”

Mandy rose her brows, “Eleven?”

“Quit it with the name for now,” Hopper commanded lightly, shaking out his head as he glanced out of the windshield, “But yeah, her.”

Mandy caught glimpses of microphones being pulled out of lights, and realized then what Hopper was so worried about. Right, Mandy thought, government surveillance. Those bad men were still lurking out there.

“She came to me in a dream,” Mandy answered, eyes looking around uncomfortably. She glanced around, her fingers picking at the hem of her skirt as she whispered to Hopper distressingly, “I sound crazy, right? Like, that’s crazy, right? Impossible, even.”

Hopper sighed, running a hand down his face before he replied, his voice softer than before, “When I tell you I’ve seen crazier, I mean I’ve _seen_ crazier, Blondie. And don’t get me started on the shit I’ve heard that goes on around here. I believe you, just keep going.”

“That’s it,” Mandy replied quickly, “That’s it. She chased me down in a dream, and then—well, I don’t know…”

“Then what?” Hopper inquired, eyes narrowing, “Go on.”

Mandy shook her head, eye brows knitting together pitifully as she choked out, “I can’t.”

“What?” Hopper asked, brows furrowing as Mandy shook her head, her lips wavering and her eyes flooding with silent tears, “Hey, hey, it’s okay. I’m not mad, you’re alright.”

Mandy shook her head more adamantly, a small sob leaving her as she said, “I can’t tell.”

“Why not?” He asked firmly, “Is someone—?”

Mandy shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut as she rubbed away her tears, “I just can’t. I’ll sound crazy, I can’t say.”

Hopper reached out to put a comforting hand on her shoulders, and Mandy jerked out of his grasp, hands moving her mouth and shoulders hunching to her ears as she turtled in on herself.

“Hey,” Hopper called softly, his voice slow and tentative, “It’s okay. You can tell me, okay? No one else is gonna know about what we talk about. You just gotta tell me.”

_Because,_ his mind echoed, _if this girl escaped that lab, I’ll have to protect her, too._

His heart was in the right place, Mandy supposed, but she still didn’t think she could trust him. She had been stupid once, and tried to tell the world all the impossible things she was capable of—and she wound up institutionalized. Mandy didn’t know if she could risk that again. She didn’t know if she could survive it all again. She couldn’t go back. She _was **not**_ going back to that.

Mandy shook her head defiantly, and Hopper sighed, taking off his hat and running a hand through his hair exasperatedly, “Okay, so you’re just not gonna talk now? Why? What can be so bad, huh? You move shit with your mind, too? Is that it? Trust me, that’s old news.”

Mandy shook her head, and he continued, “What then? What is it? You read minds, then?”

Mandy paused in her movement, eyes big as he said it, noticeably enough for him to stammer to silence, before he whispered, “You read minds? Really?”

Mandy glanced up at him, feeling helpless and stupid and like she was in a free fall off the edge of a cliff, heading straight for inevitable disaster, before she nodded, covering her mouth as she tried to stifle her grief-stricken sob, “You won’t tell, right?”

Tears flooded her eyes, and she folded in on herself as she blubbered hysterically. She couldn’t believe she spilled her guts so easily, and she would have done anything to take it all back, “Please, don’t tell, I’m sorry—”

“Hey, whoa!” He patted her back awkwardly, “I already said I won’t say anything, okay? And I won’t. This will all be our secret. Nobody will know. Honestly, I don’t think anyone would even believe me, so—”

Mandy wailed harder at his words, rocking herself slightly, hands balled up around her mouth, because he was right. No normal person would ever believe him. She was not normal by any means. She was a freak. The shit she could do was crazy. Impossible, even. Maybe, her traitorous mind reasoned, they had been right to institutionalize her.

“Okay, okay—!” Hopper tried to console, voice struggling for control of a situation that was rapidly circling a toilet bowl at that point, “You’re okay, I promise. Let’s just—Table it, okay? You don’t have to talk about it, alright? So, you can stop crying.”

But she couldn’t stop, because Mandy was sure she was going to regret owning up to it. She was fucking positive. She could see it all happening again in horrible detail, the first visit to the psychiatrist all the way to the way that ugly, monstrous needle stared her down. She was going to lose years to that place again—and maybe her whole life, this time. She fucked up. She really, really fucked up.

Hopper let her cry herself out, leaving her only to her dry, trembling sobs and quivering lips. Mandy choked down one last hiccup, the last of her tears running down her face, and she wiped at them furiously, scooting further down into the seat and bringing her knees to her chest as she looked out of the passenger’s side window, trying to hide her face from Hopper’s view. Her shame seated itself nice and cozy in the hollow core of her heart.

“I—“ Hopper began, cutting himself short with an tired sigh before he breathed out, “I wasn’t gonna call the lab, and I won’t call them still, okay? I’m sorry for saying that.”

Mandy angled her head so she could glance at him. His eyes were trained on her silent form, and Mandy sniffled, before she nodded her head, “I know.”

Hopper chuckled awkwardly at that, “Right, because—“

He stopped himself short, not wanting to set her off again, and Mandy pursed her lips, nodding, “Yeah, because.”

Hopper paused, looking to her warily, before he finally announced, “That’s why, right? That’s why she came to you.”

Mandy nodded numbly, “Yeah, probably. She tried to contact me for a while, but I—uh, well, ran from her, I guess.”

“Hm,” Hopper hummed in thought, “What made you stop running?”

Mandy laughed lightly as she answered, “She wore me down.”

Hopper chuckled at her response, sighing as his mind reminisced—his thoughts flooding over with Eleven’s surly expressions and the way she yelled at him, “Yeah, the kid can be real hard-headed sometimes. I know what you mean.”

“I thought I was losing my mind, y’know?” Mandy said quietly, sounding small and pathetic to even her own ears, “She just… was always there. I didn’t know what to do, she wouldn’t go away.”

“In your dreams?” Hopper inquired tentatively, chin tilting down at he tried to catch her distant gaze.

Mandy shook her head, “I started to, um, see her. When I was awake.”

“How?” Hopper questioned quickly, listening with rapt attention. His mind was puzzling at that. He knew she could spy on people through radios and televisions, but he didn’t know anyone could ever spy back.

“I can—y’know?“ Mandy nodded along, “Read minds, right? So, if she were to project her consciousness somewhere, surely I would see it, wouldn’t I?”

Hopper blinked, eyes gazing through Mandy as he digested her words, “Have you ever seen any other people like her then? Their projected consciousness?”

Mandy squinted at him, “How would I know? She looks like a normal person to me.”

Hopper rose his brows to her, “Really?”

“Yeah,” Mandy nodded firmly, “I told you I thought I was going crazy, didn’t I? Imagine it, you see some weird little girl everywhere you go, and nobody says a damn thing about it! I was convinced I was losing it.”

Hopper chuckled at her explanation as he replied, shrugging slightly, “Yeah, I would think I was seeing shit, too.”

“Yeah,” Mandy reaffirmed, “And she wouldn’t leave me alone. Everywhere I went, she haunted me like a ghost. I honestly thought I had suddenly became a psychic medium for a second!”

That got a louder laugh from Hopper as he scratched his head, “Yeah, well—I mean, I guess that makes sense. How’d you figure out she was real?”

Mandy groaned, running her hands down her face as she sunk further into her seat, “She poltergeisted a bathroom. Someone else heard it.”

Hopper threw his head back as he laughed, and Mandy looked to him miserably, “Yeah, she moves shit with her mind.”

“Yeah,” Mandy bit out sarcastically, “I figured that one out, thanks.”

Hopper smiled at her then, shrugging as he finished laughing at her, “Yeah, y’know, I knew she was getting all these weird words from somewhere. I thought it was from MTV, but it’s you, isn’t it? She spends all day talking to you, doesn’t she?”

Mandy glanced at him sheepishly, shrugging, “Sometimes, I guess. She visits Mike Wheeler more often then she sees me, now.”

Hopper nodded, his mind puzzling over her very abrupt existence in his life; she had been there all along, his head supplied, and he didn’t even notice. His brain was practically steaming as it chugged along to fill in the blanks, “How do you know about Wheeler? You see that in her head?”

“No,” Mandy replied honestly, before she paused, “Or, well, I saw him in her memories, but I didn’t really think much of it. She told me about him on her own.”

Hopper furrowed his brows in her direction, his expression distinctly befuddled, “Why?”

Mandy sighed, “He had a bully at school, so she told me about him. He’s all she has, y’know?”

“Yeah,” Hopper breathed out softly.

“Well, that and the cabin, I guess,” Mandy stated plainly, making alarm bells ring out in Hopper’s mind. 

“What?” He asked snippily, “You know where she is?”

Mandy jolted, before hastily explaining, “I won’t tell—“

“I know,” Hopper bit out, cutting off her rambling with a disgruntled exhale, “I know you won’t, Blondie.”

“Um,” Mandy stammered out, “I—uh, well… She showed it to me on her own. So I could, y’know, visit her, I guess. I didn’t realize that at the time, but… I think that was the reason. I know she’s not allowed outside, or whatever.”

“Showed you it? In her mind?” Hopper questioned.

Mandy shook her head, giving a loud exhale as she began what was sure to be a long-winded explanation, “No, not in her mind. Um, do you remember how I told you about projected consciousnesses?” 

Hopper nodded along tiredly, and Mandy continued, “She, um, showed me how to do it. I guess I was doing it before, in my sleep, and that’s how she found me initially. But, um, yeah, she pretty much took me all the way to her home, and then she… saw me, y’know? Like with her own eyes, not with her head.”

Hopper nodded along with her words, regardless of how disjointed and discomforting they were.

“Your projected consciousness?” Hopper reiterated, and Mandy nodded.

“Yeah, she saw my projected consciousness.”

“That’s wild,” Hopper stated, leaning back in his seat and looking at her bewilderedly, “What’s that like, leaving your body?”

Mandy snorted, answering with a somber, “Um, well, sometimes it feels like I never came back.”

Hopper hummed contemplatively, scratching a hand through his stubble not he underside of his jaw, “Do you still do it?”

“What?” Mandy mumbled.

“Project your consciousness,” He clarified, and Mandy nodded in the affirmative in reply, coaxing him to further question, “And you can go anywhere?”

Mandy nodded again, “Yeah.”

“Is that how you do it?” Hopper questioned quietly, voice low and hissed like he was sharing a secret, “Disappear?”

Mandy gave pause at how quickly Hopper came to that conclusion on his own. She could tell he’d been around the bizarre for longer than any normal person should ever have to be.

“Yes,” Mandy answered robotically, “I did it by accident, the night you saw me.”

Hopper’s mind flashed with vibrant colors bursting in the back of his eyes—her sobbing, soot-covered form writhing in the smoking earth, the orange heat of the fire, and the horrifying white her eyes turned just before she flashed away. 

“Have you done it since that night?” Hopper questioned warily, and when Mandy shook her head in a negative wordless reply, a small, relieved breath left him, “It’s for the best that you don’t. People are trying to figure out what happened that night, and the news is saying it’s the government, so they are scrambling to find the cause of it. And you don’t want them to find out it’s you, Blondie.”

Mandy nodded, saying simply, “Okay, I won’t do it again.”

“Good,” Hopper stated, crossing his arms and looking to her peculiarly, before he finally asked, “By the way, what’s your name? I don’t think I ever got it.”

“Mandy.” 

“Hi, Mandy. I’m Jim.”

* * *

So, he was boned. 

Billy told himself that the worst way this could go was the cops calling his dad to take him home. Even being sent off to juvie would be kinder than calling his _dad._ At least if they had him caged, he reasoned, his dad wouldn’t be able to beat his ass within an inch of his life. The thought almost made him laugh at how fucking dismal it was.

As he sat under the dim, amber police station lights and squinted at the gruesome faces of the four boys across from him, Billy mentally prepared himself. His stomach was churning with nerves, and his palms were sweating from the stress. He felt twitchy, and wanted nothing more than to punch something. He balled up his fists, inhaling sharply and holding the breath in his lungs until his thoughts slowed enough that his hands stopped shaking.

“Alright,” The glass door at the front of the police station swung open, the chief of police stalking in with Mandy at his heels, makeup smeared down her face in blackened splotches. She was quiet and calm, despite the obvious tear streaks down her face, and Billy found himself furrowing his brows. The little history lesson he got the hour previous made him stare hard at her face as she looked around the room. He didn’t know what he was even looking for, really. He found out about a soft spot, and he found himself looking at Mueller, waiting to see something he couldn’t name.

But he didn’t see any change. There was no glaring chink in her armor that he could spy, and even with mascara lines running down her face and black-ringed eyes, he still couldn’t find a spec of weakness on her. He should have, though, he thought. Something should have been different. He could see evidence of tears and see the redness of a hard cry around her nose, and now he knew about her screaming and having to be saved by Steve Harrington, _of all fucking people_ —and she should have seemed different, really. The spell she had on him should have been broken by all of this new information. The expression on her face should have been that open fucking fragility girls wore when they cried. She was being herded in chains, and she should have at least looked helpless about that. 

Mandy Mueller should have looked fallible and frail, and wounded and small in his eyes. But she didn’t, and instead, Billy found himself stewing in his own desperation and bleakness, while Mandy fucking Mueller walked into the room wearing her smeared mascara like fucking warpaint. He couldn’t decide what was so unsettling about that, but there _was_ something distinctly unsettling about the blank look on her face, paired with the easy way she tilted her chin up while she walked—looking too proud with the current state of her obvious dishevelment.

Billy Hargrove’s insides squirmed as he watched her, eyes hard and narrowed as his jealousy coiled tight around his heart.

The older man pointed over to where him and few other guys had been deposited onto some old, creaky wooden chairs, “Sit for a second, I’ll be back.”

Mandy trailed after the cop, wrists bound before her as she called, “Uh, can you uncuff me first? I’m chaffing.”

Billy found his brows rising at her statement, and the cop turned around with a sullen expression, before he sighed, “Just sit for a second, I need to sort some things.”

So that was it, Billy thought. While the rest of them were groaning and sulking, Mandy Mueller already had herself set up to be released before she even got to the police station. Fuck, Billy scowled down at the floor as he hung his head, Queenie must have had a magical fucking siren voice, because she wasn’t exactly a wordsmith around him. What the fuck was that all about? Why did Billy constantly fucking feel like he was not seeing some great aspect of her personality that other people encountered? Bitch was filled with secrets, it seemed, and he couldn’t get shit out of her. 

Mandy sighed, turning away from the cop and rolling her eyes as she trotted over to the group and dropped into an empty seat, the wood creaking as she shifted.

“Mueller,” One boy sneered, and Billy’s nerves were so fried that he was ready to jump him just for speaking her name.

Mandy looked over with a bland expression, eyes squinting before she announced plainly, “You’ve gained weight.”

“So, you do remember me?” The boy asked, his lip curling up.

Mandy rubbed her head, both wrists coming up to her hairline as she winced briefly, before sighing and shrugging, “Yeah, I guess. I hit you with a baseball bat at Cameron’s sixteenth birthday party my freshman year.”

“Jared Cochran,” The guy supplied his name for her, and she shrugged.

“Sure,” Mandy said, looking away uncaringly, “But everyone called you Homer, remember?”

“Because you hit me with a baseball bat!” He exclaimed, leaning forward in his seat as he pointed at her with his bound wrists.

Billy watched the interaction with vague interest. He wished he could fully commit himself to the distraction that Mandy Mueller’s sudden instigating appearance gave, but his mind was being gnawed away at by his anxiety, and his interest was tepid at best. His heart was banging a steady rhythm between his ears, and the world was a quiet whisper under it. Even Mandy’s usually grating voice wasn’t enough to cut through the rush of his blood in his head, and Billy fidgeted uneasily, his stomach clenching as he tried to work out a way out of this situation in which he kept his head on his shoulders. His brain couldn’t put forth anything other than the repeating question: _How the hell did Mandy do it?_

Fuck, his dad was going to actually kill him this time. Or worse, kick him out in a new town where he had no fucking job and no fucking friends. And god, wouldn’t that just fucking suck? How fucking typical, honestly. His dad moves him across the fucking country to some bumfuck town in the middle of serial killer country, and then after one fuck up, kicks him to the curb. Billy could definitely imagine that happening in his near future.

Billy scrambled to figure out a way to run away back to California with twenty dollars for gas.

“You’re a bitch,” The statement brought him out of his panicked reverie, and Billy blinked, looking between Jared Cochran and Mandy Mueller as they glared at one another cooly from their seats.

“Boo hoo, cry about it,” Mandy retorted dryly, “It’s not my fault you had the kind of friends that would rather laugh at you than help you up. Make better choices, Loser.”

“Bitch,” Cochran reiterated, nudging the guy beside him, “See? Told you.”

Mandy snorted, rolling her eyes as she leaned back in her seat and crossed her legs, the rickety chair beneath her squeaking, “If you’re gonna insult me, at least be original. I’ve been called a bitch by people who actually like me, y’know? It’s almost endearing at this point.”

Cochran shook his head, scoffing, “You’re a disgusting whore. Still using guys to do your dirty work, huh?”

Mandy paused, brows pinching together on her face, “Excuse me?”

“Still keeping Harrington around, right?” He inquired snidely, “I bet he makes a nice guard dog.”

_“Harrington?”_ Mandy repeated slowly and with purpose, face scrunching up in distaste, “What would he have to guard against?! If I remember correctly, I kicked your ass tonight, not Harrington!”

“No,” Billy intercepted, making Mandy’s face smooth over, eyes darting to him with curiosity shining in them, “I definitely saw Harrington put him in a chokehold.”

Mandy’s brows rose, looking over to the Jared accusingly, “Oh, really? Looks like you’ve been busy tonight, Buddy. You really get around, huh? I feel cheated on.”

Billy found himself letting a small laugh leave his lips unbidden at her sudden turn in demeanor, and Mandy looked over to him, lips quirking up at one corner in his direction, before she was looking back to Jared Cochran as he loudly scoffed, moving in a swish of polyester.

“You deserved what Amy Radner gave to you,” Cochran announced coldly, and Mandy’s smile grew, before she was pursing her lips and looking away, trying to hide her own amusement.

“God, you’re so unoriginal,” Mandy muttered in good humor, “Y’know, I kicked her ass after that, right? She hit me with a _pinto._ I barely even felt it.”

“I wish I had been there to see it,” He retorted, leaning forward to settle his elbows on his knees, his chair groaning under his weight, “I think it would have been really fucking satisfying to see you get a taste of your own medicine. I heard you cried.”

“Over what?” Mandy fired back without missing a beat, her ego urging on her next words, “The part when I slapped the shit out of Radner? Or the part where I ran her head through a window? Or the part where I hit her so hard she decided to take an involuntary nap? I tucked her in like it was bedtime, Cochran, and I laughed the entire fucking time. It was kinda hilarious. Her eyes crossed, man.”

Billy’s heart jumpstarted in his chest at her words, his anxiety plunging down into his stomach, making a slow, rolling nausea begin to simmer inside him. Was it possible to get a hard-on when he was half-way to puking? His body couldn’t seem to decide if it wanted to fuck something or just fucking expel his entire stomach contents. He distantly realized he wasn’t sobered up yet, and contemplated the likelihood of the alcohol he consumed that night deciding to betray him in the moment. It didn’t seem like it, and Billy choked down the rising bile in his throat. His fucking pulse was already up like he was running a race, and Mandy Mueller’s mean words were squeezing down hard on his already struggling heart. 

Fucking bitch, he thought, not even able to manage any real bitterness as he thought it. Mandy Mueller was trouble, and he knew it, but now that he just fell right into her bullshit, he didn’t like it so much anymore. Hearing her narrate what happened with Radner was too much for him in the moment. The blood, the shattering of glass, and the way she _fucking_ laughed. His brain replayed it over and over, and he couldn’t bare the images that flashed in the back of his mind. They were too violent and loud, and his already frayed mind couldn’t decide what to do. He wanted to scream, get out of these fucking cuffs, and just fucking break the annoying, creaky chair he sat on over someone’s fucking head.

“You’re pure evil,” Cochran looked to her with a frown. 

Mandy smiled in reply, and Billy glanced to her, looking to her and seeing that mean streak she had in her that Billy fell in love with. He agreed silently, watching the way her lips curled up in amusement as she stared down Cochran.

“Alright, Blondie,” A voice interrupted them, drawing Mandy’s attention away from the boys as she perked up and sat straight in her seat.

“Yeah?” She asked, eyes bright with anticipation in a sudden moodswing that had Jared scoffing derisively in his seat.

The cop said nothing more, simply nodding his head and gesturing with a single hand in a rolling motion, and Mandy stood silently, holding out her bound wrists. The cop moved toward her with a key, unlocking her cuffs and releasing her. Mandy drew her arms back, rubbing at her wrists, massaging the reddened skin.

“And don’t forget,” The cop began in a forbidding tone that had Mandy looking to him with severe intensity, “Stay out of trouble. Got it?”

Mandy nodded, “You’ll never see me again if you’re lucky.”

The cop chortled at her words, shaking his head as he sighed and corrected, “If _you’re_ lucky.”

Mandy nodded a little begrudgingly, “Maybe a little bit of both, Chief.”

The cop nodded along tiredly, trying to herd her towards the exit, before she paused, stammering out, “Oh, um, before I forget. You have a Steve Harrington around here somewhere, right? I gotta take him with me. He’s my ride home.”

“Yeah, I got him around here,” He replied, gesturing over to the opposite end of the station where Harrington’s disheveled head was peeking over a small filing cabinet, one eye nearly swollen shut. 

“Right, I’ll take him off your hands,” Mandy announced perkily, rocking back on her heels momentarily, before she was glancing in Billy’s direction. She caught his gaze briefly, before biting her lip and turning back around toward the cop, watching as he waved over someone else to bring Harrington. Steve practically tripped over every desk and chair in the fifteen feet that stood between him and Mandy, a single uninjured eye wide as he looked to her with pure bafflement. 

Steve’s first act as a free man was to pat Mandy on the back, and Mandy looked to him like she might have actually been regretting freeing him. Billy would have found great amusement in that if it wasn’t looking very likely that she was going to be abandoning him in that police station.

“Alright,” The cop exhaled exasperatedly, “Anything else, your highness?”

Mandy shifted on her feet briefly, eyes darting to him quickly before she was pointing in Billy’s direction, making his brows jump toward his hairline. He almost didn’t even want to get his hopes up.

“What?”

“Yeah, uh, I’ll take that one, too,” Mandy blurted out, speaking about him like he was a purchase at a store rather than a human being liberated from police custody. She was so unbelievably irritating, but god, he could just fucking kiss her senseless right now. If she actually managed to free him, he might actually kiss her fucking feet. Shit, he’d kiss her fucking ass, he didn’t care at this point. Just anything to get out of these fucking cuffs and out of this depressing police station.

“Which one?” The cop asked gruffly, and Mandy rose her brows.

“Uh, that one,” She pointed with a single index finger, “The one with the angry look and the pretty eyes.”

Billy couldn’t stop the smirk that pulled at his lips as she described him, and he found himself looking down to his lap to try and hide his amusement. Of course, she’d finally decide to admit some part of him was attractive in a situation like this. And, of course, she’d use a fucking word like pretty. She just had to undermine a guy’s masculinity; it wouldn’t be a compliment from her if it weren’t a little double-edged.

The cop sighed at her vague descriptors, “Pretty eyes?”

“Well, that’s what I’ve heard,” Mandy quipped back teasingly, “Don’t quote me.”

“You’re pushing it, Blondie,” The cop warned, and Mandy sighed, rolling her head back on her neck as she let out a groan.

“Alright, alright,” Mandy began, waving a hand around, “Curly hair, unflattering haircut, blue eyes, wearing a jacket, shirt unbuttoned, tight jeans, and some off-brand boots. The mean look thing still stands, by the way. He’s got those eyebrows, y’know what I’m talking about? They speak to you—whatever, anyway. Go on, Hargrove, wave nicely to Chief Hopper.”

Billy glanced over in their direction, sighing and holding up his bound wrists as he obliged her shamefully.

Chief Hopper lumbered over to him, and Billy stood up mechanically, holding out his arms in the same way Mueller and Harrington did. As the cuffs were sliding open and clinking together in Hopper’s grasp, Billy spotted the broken skin, curved lines running around the inside of his wrists and oozing slightly. He wiped them without much thought, before he was tilting down his chin and toeing around Hopper as quietly as possible. The entire moment was almost unreal; he almost felt like if he made a single sound, the illusion would be shattered, and he would chained back up and tossed in a cell. 

_“Whipped,”_ One guy coughed out, while others snickered.

Another one hacked out, _“Pussy.”_

_“Wttsh!”_ Another boy mimed a whip lash, and every fucking person he passed in their seats began making similar sounds. Jackasses.

Billy trained his gaze ahead as they continued to jeer at his back, and Mandy and Steve simply rolled their eyes at the mocking calls. 

“God, talk about jealous,” Mandy simpered in his direction as he closed in on her and Harrington, “They just wish they could come home with me.”

Harrington promptly elbowed her in the tit, and Mandy groaned.

“Can it, Smartass,” Steve glowered lowly, and Mandy rolled her eyes, huffing slightly as she rubbed at her boob.

“Don’t be ungrateful, Steven,” Mandy pouted, one hand on her chest and the other swatting Harrington’s ass. He jumped slightly, head jerking, before he was shifting out of her reach as she grinned.

“Alright,” Chief Hopper addressed the group, but his eyes stayed on Mandy’s form as she stood before him and Harrington, “Stay out of trouble. No more fighting. No going places you shouldn’t. No more property damage. Keep your heads in your goddamn books, got it? _Be good._ ”

Mandy nodded, “Sure thing, Chief. We’ll be good.”

Hargrove found himself nodding robotically, and Harrington followed suit. Hopper looked to all three of them, before closing his eyes and sighing slightly as he hung his head, appearing especially dejected. He looked like he already knew letting them go was going to be a mistake.

“Alright, now get lost,” Hopper waved them off with very little ceremony, and Mandy cocked her head while Harrington shifted uneasily. Billy didn’t need any other words, and swiftly turned around and shoved himself out of the exit. The glass doors glided open, and the crisp autumn night bit at him, filling his lungs with a frosty lungful of air. 

Fuck, it felt good to be free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> djksljadsklasdj; Next chapter features Billy, Mandy, and Steve walking home in the dark, and YOU KNOW shenanigans will be taking place lol. I'm literally so excited over the chap so fdbhajdshsajdkhfddghj hopefully it will be out by next fri/sat??? ugh, if I manage to stay on schedule lol anyway, love yall!! <3


	16. F(r)ight Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three of the coolest teens in Hawkins, Indiana end up walking home in the dead of night. Nothing could go wrong in that scenario. Nothing at all. :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY so there will be a trigger warning here: sexual assault will be written about a lil bit so IDK OKAY? do w/ that what you will. it's not too graphic (at least not to me??? idek) but it's still shitty tbh. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, sexual assault is gross and I'm always super uncomfortable writing about it (makes me feel icky tbh like idk) but it is there. oh, also, death happens this chap so. there ya go. shit's going on in this chap. You have been Forewarned.
> 
> alright, now onward! on w/ the hot-mess express! choo, choo, bitch!!
> 
> p.s. i snuck more plot into my 1980s teenager trash fanfiction... can you even bELIEVE????
> 
> p.p.s. if there's any mistakes, they're all mine and I'm deeply sorry u__u i'll def come back and re-read it over again b/c I feel like i've def missed some mistake somewhere in here???? lol

“—I’m just saying—“

Mandy shrieked, tossing her head back as she, Steve, and Billy marched down a long winding road in the dark, each ten feet apart and tired-looking.

“God, shut up already!” Mandy shouted into the night, the sound of an animal’s distress emitting from somewhere in the darkened woods around them at the horrific pitch of her voice, “Literally, Steve, we were about to get in the biggest trouble of our young lives, I wasn’t about to push it and ask for a lift!”

“Well, you know what, Mandy—?” Harrington began, putting a hand on his belt as he paused, and Mandy rushed right passed him, hands balled up into fists at her sides as she stomped petulantly along the side of the road.

“I don’t care, Steve! I really don’t! Just shut the fuck up! You’re all fucking athletic and manly until you gotta walk in the fucking dark! If you complain one more time, I’m gonna wring your chicken neck!”

Billy snorted from the position he walked in front of them, and Mandy huffed as she heard the sound, crossing her arms as she stared hard at his back.

“What the hell is so funny, Hargrove?” Mandy hissed in his direction, and he angled his eye-line to spy her from over his shoulder, before he was back to looking in front of him.

“You,” He replied curtly, and Mandy pursed her lips, wanting to argue without really knowing what to say to him directly.

“Well, then,” She puffed out, eyes narrowed in his direction, “All the things I do for people, and I can’t get a smidgen of respect. It’s unbelievable! You all really don’t deserve me!!”

“Shut up, Mandy,” Steve called to her back, and Mandy turned around a blew a raspberry in his direction.

“Eat me!” Mandy shouted back, turning around to walk backwards and flip off Harrington from his position walking behind her.

“No! You eat _me,_ Mandy!” Steve retorted intelligently, making Hargrove give a sound of distaste at the head of the pack.

“Will the both of you cram it? Seriously, you’re going to get us eaten by bears or wolves or something!” Hargrove hissed back to them, and Mandy choked on whatever retort she had as Harrington gave a wheeze of disbelieving laughter. Billy fully turned to give them both a deadpan look, stopped on spot as Mandy and Harrington continued dragging their feet toward their destination, “What? Getting eaten by the local wildlife sound like fun to you two clowns?”

“Do we even have bears here?” Mandy voiced aloud cluelessly.

Hargrove gestured around them to the line of deadened wood on either side of them, “It’s the woods, man.”

“I think we’d be more likely to be eaten by a cougar,” Steve stated, and Mandy frowned bewilderedly in his direction, making him laugh at her expression.

“Why is that funny again?” Mandy asked as Steve strolled right past her, “Steve! Answer me, you prick!”

Both boys trailed ahead of her, and Mandy hastened her pace so that she was squeezing her lithe frame between their shoulders as they walked along side one another.

Hargrove rose his brows at her as their arms brushed, and Mandy looked to him defensively, “What? If some bobcat comes out here to eat us, I don’t want to go first.”

“Aren’t you cold?” He asked, eyeing her calculatingly, eyes darting down her body briefly, before returning to her face. Hargrove frowned slightly, raising his brows as he awaited her reply.

Mandy waved off the question, “Nah, not really.”

Hargrove’s brows rose even higher as he eyes her speculatively, “Really now? You’re not cold in that itty-bitty outfit?”

“You know me, Honey,” Mandy grinned cattishly, “I’m always runnin’ hot.”

Steve promptly bumped his shoulder into hers, “Smartass.”

Mandy turned her attention to Steve on the other side of her, bumping him harshly with a hip, making him stagger slightly with a grunt, “I hope the wild animals get you first, Steve.”

* * *

Click, click, clack, click.

Click, clack, click, click.

Billy was getting irritated by the irregularity of Mueller’s stride. Her fucking boots were loud against the pavement, and the way she was hobbling—her shoulder just brushing against his every now and then—was driving him fucking crazy.

Finally, he blurted out, “Why are you limping?”

“I’m not, Dude,” Harrington replied testily, and Hargrove rolled his eyes.

“I’m not talking to you!” Billy dismissed him with a frown from over the top of Mandy’s head.

Mandy simply frowned, eyeing him miserably, but otherwise remaining silent.

“Well?” Billy looked pointedly in her direction as she continued to bumble along beside him. Eventually, with a begrudging sigh, he grabbed her arm and yanked her to a stop, “You gonna answer, or not?”

Steve stopped a little ahead of them, eyeing him warily, before he glanced to Mueller, “You alright, Mandy?”

Mandy sighed tiredly, “I’m fine, let’s just keep going, please. I want to be home already.”

“If you need a break, we can take a break,” Harrington offered, and Billy glanced to him with an annoyed expression.

Mandy groaned, tossing her head back, “Ugh, can we please just get going?! My feet are fucking killing me!”

“How bad?” Hargrove found himself asking, before he paused, tacking on, “On a scale of one to ten. One being no pain, ten being the worst.”

Mandy rolled her eyes, “I don’t know. I hate these shoes, and I plan on throwing them out when I get home? I’m never gonna walk anywhere ever again? I’m seriously considering a foot transplant at this point? Where does all of that rate on your number scale?”

Steve snorted at her melodramatic explanation, sighing, “Alright, Mueller, I’ll carry you. You’re in heels, after all.”

Mandy crossed her arms, “I can—“

“I’ll carry her,” Billy decided, talking right over Mandy’s voice, and Mandy looked between him and Harrington with a vexed look. Harrington was eyeing him detestably, and Billy bit out, “I already kicked your ass tonight, Harrington, so save the look for another day.”

Mandy frowned, looking between the two boys uncomfortably, before she was walking off, arms still crossed as she tottered along the pavement unevenly. Billy caught up to her in one long stride, pulling her to a stop again, “Alright, c’mon. Get on my back.”

She avoided looking at his face as she whined out, “No, Hargrove.”

“Alright, then I’m tossing you over my shoulder,” Billy warned in a light tone, and Mandy’s eyes cut dangerously in his direction.

“The hell you are,” Mandy sneered, and Billy pounced in her direction, arms open to snag her, and Mandy’s first instinct was to pull her fists up in front of herself and ready to punch him as she jumped back out of his reach. 

Billy paused, brows raised at her stance, her right arm twitching just slightly when he moved, and he found himself laughing at the defensive look on her face, “Were you seriously gonna punch me?!”

“Yes!” Mandy exclaimed, brows pinching in the middle of her face, “If you toss me anywhere, it’ll hurt! My insides feel like orange pulp, and I swear I will scream if you come within five feet of me.”

Billy rolled his eyes with a grin, “You’re fucking nutty, man.”

“I’m not!” Mandy insisted, “I just don’t want anyone carrying me, okay?! I can walk!!”

“Sure you can,” Billy drawled out as Harrington watched the two of them bicker with an amused gaze looking in Mandy’s direction, “Just slower than us, and looking like a lame-ass with a peg-leg.”

Mandy gasped indignantly at his words, before she finally huffed out, “Fine then! Carry me, and regret it! I’ll bet ten bucks you won’t be able to even carry me for more than five minutes!”

Billy chuckled, nodding as he crouched and gestured for her to climb on, “You got that money on you now?”

“The real question is if you do, Dickhead,” Mandy growled as she climbed awkwardly onto his back. Billy rolled his eyes as she fumbled around, grasping at his shoulders and making various sounds of disgruntlement, before finally grumbling out, “What the fuck am I even doing? Tell me where you want me, so I can stop struggling with this.”

Well, Billy snarked within the confines of his head, preferably beneath him, but Steve was there still, hovering off to the side, and that could potentially make things awkward.

“Well—“ Billy began, cocking his head as he grinned over his shoulder at her, brows wiggling.

“Ugh, shut up, please,” Mandy closed her eyes as she sighed, “You don’t even need to say it. I know, trust me. I fucking know.”

Billy laughed as he took her hand and hooked it over his shoulder before nodding for her to do the same to the other one, once she did, he snagged the back of her legs and heaved her up. She dug her fingers into his jacket and squeaked as he lifted her, and he bounced her higher onto his back as he heard the sound, her thighs catching around his hips as she clung to him.

“Well, that only took, like, forever,” Steve announced dryly, and Mandy settled her arms on Billy’s shoulders, hands interlocking in front of his clavicle as she jerked her face around his head to make a childish expression at Harrington.

“You could’ve left, Steve,” Mandy rose her brows haughtily, “No one made you stay and wait for us.”

“She’s got a point there, Harrington,” Billy shrugged in Steve’s direction, and Mandy hummed from beside his head. Billy glanced in her direction from the corner of his eye as he caught up to Harrington and matched his pace.

Harrington glared at him from the corner of his gaze, before marching faster, and Billy smirked, walking alongside him and staring at the side of his face pointedly. Steve pouted slightly, his brows furrowing as Billy kept his stride, Mandy bouncing on his back whenever he had to pick up his pace, and making mumbled complaints in his ear as she leaned her chin on his shoulder tiredly.

“Stop complaining already,” Billy muttered right back after the umpteenth complaint, and Mandy huffed, sticking out her tongue.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” She retorted lethargically, “You’re not exactly a Cadillac, Hargrove. Shit’s bumpy back here.”

Billy rolled his eyes, before moving his hands briefly out from underneath her, making her screech and clench her legs around his waist. He almost staggered at how tightly she wound herself around his waist and neck, and he found himself laughing as he placed his hands on the underside of her ass and pushed her right back up against his shoulders. She breathed a sigh of relief, clutching him tighter, before flicking the side of his ear and making his earring jingle.

“You’re such a dick,” Mandy breathed out, and Billy laughed.

“You’re annoying,” Billy retorted lightheartedly.

“Like I even care what you think,” Mandy mumbled, cheek leaning against the side of his head tiredly.

“You got my money, Princess?” He asked, brows raised as he waited for a response that never came, “Uh-huh, that’s what I thought.”

Mandy grumbled, digging her chin into the crook of his neck, and he squeezed her flesh where he carried her. 

“Don’t have anything else to say?” Billy asked, smirking in Harrington’s direction as he watched the pair of them with blatant dislike. Billy suspected he might have had feelings for Mueller, given their obvious history and the fact that they were both big players in the high school ecosystem. If Billy could get to Mueller first, he thought it might be just the thing he needed to ruin Steve for good. He wondered how jealous Harrington was just by watching Mueller mutter things in his ear that Steve, himself, couldn’t even make out. Ha, must have drove him fucking crazy. Good.

“Shut up, please,” Mandy moaned quietly, “I’m trying to power nap.”

Billy jumped in his step, jostling her in hopes to reawaken her as he sang out annoyingly, “Nah, no napping when you’re riding me, Queenie!”

Mandy stuck her finger in her mouth and tried to shove it in his ear to give him a wet-willy, but he jerked himself out of her line of fire and dropped his hold on her ass, making her give a shout of distress and cling to him with both hands on his shoulders to avoid falling.

“God, you’re practically psychic, it really sucks!” She screamed at the side of Billy’s head, and he winced at the loudness of her voice, moving his hands back up to carry her again with a chuckle, “Steve! How come you didn’t carry me!?”

Billy laughed harder at her as she whined miserably in Steve’s direction, making the boy look to the two of them with a dry expression.

“Leave me out of your flirting, Mueller,” Steve said drolly, and Mandy made a face.

“If you think this is flirting, Steve, I feel really sorry for Nancy having to date you for a whole fucking year, honestly,” Mandy quipped back, brows turning up as she looked to Steve with judgement clear on her features.

“Shut up, Mandy,” Steve bit out.

“I’m just saying,” Mandy shrugged, “This isn’t flirting. Like, I haven’t even turned it on yet, y’know? I got game, Steve. Crazy game.”

Billy bit his lip to avoid laughing at her, and Steve rolled his eyes at the two of them.

“Don’t roll your eyes,” Mandy called, head bumping against Billy as she angled her head in Steve’s direction, “I’m being serious. I could work a sex line—make a guy cream himself just by asking nicely.”

Billy laughed outright at that, tossing his head back as he looked back at her, “God, you’re crazy! I love it.”

“Why are you laughing?” Mandy smiled slightly just by seeing the look on his face, brows raising in her confusion, “I’m being dead serious!”

“I know you are,” Billy chuckled out, head tilted back still as he looked up at her.

“Then why is it funny?” Mandy asked again, brows rising as she looked down at him.

“Because I don’t believe you,” He finished, looking forward again as he adjusted his hold on her, and Mandy leaned closer to the side of his head, her breath tickling the shell of his ear and sending a little shiver down his spine. Billy steeled himself, rolling his eyes with a heavy exhale as he spotted the smirk that curled up the corners of her lips. 

God, she was a miserable fucking tease to mess with him like this when she knew she already thwarted his attempt to kiss her a few hours previous. Diabolical bitch. She really was pure evil.

“How’s this doing it for you?” She breathed out, lips brushing just slightly against his skin, making him twitch, his fingers digging into the supple flesh of her thighs, “Hm? I think you might _liiiiiiikke_ it.”

Billy snorted, squirming slightly as her breath tickled behind his ear, “Fuck off.”

“Oh, _Baby,_ ” Mandy began, her voice rising in pitch as she pouted, but remaining quiet enough that Harrington couldn’t hear her, “I think you’re too mean to me sometimes. I think I should punish you.”

Billy laughed at her, looking back at her with an easy grin that he didn’t even have to fake, “You’re so stupid.”

“Really?” Mandy pouted, huffing and digging her chin into his shoulder again, “Nothing? Your pee-pee didn’t go even a little hard? That’s such bullshit. You’re gay.”

“You have no game,” Billy shrugged, absolutely refusing to let her get to him, “Sorry, _Baby._ ”

“Don’t apologize to me,” Mandy chortled, smirking, “I can work on it. Hey, Harrington!”

Billy rolled his eyes at her as Steve looked over to them.

“What?”

“Come here and let me come on to you for a sec, I need some practice.”

“Shut up, Mueller.”

“Oh, Baby!” Mandy shouted to him as he walked a few steps over along the treeline, completely ignoring the fact that Steve dismissed her already, “I think you’re too mean to me! I’m gonna need to punish you!”

“Was that it?” Steve looked fully at her, expression disappointed, and Mandy roared with laughter from over Billy’s shoulder, before she pressed her forehead into his jacket and muffled herself.

“I already told her it was bad,” Billy announced plainly, and Steve actually smirked at him, shaking his head.

“It was pretty bad, Mandy,” Steve agreed.

“Oh, so what exactly was Nancy Wheeler saying to you that got you all revved up?” Mandy inquired heatedly, eyes narrowed with playful defensiveness as she called out in feigned climax, panting and keening out, “Ooh, Steve, let’s talk about Shakespeare and calculus! Ooh, Steve, let’s study and do our homework! Ooh, yeah, baby! The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell!!”

Mandy rocked back, grinding into Billy’s back as she tossed her head back and pantomimed a sex act, and Billy found himself laughing at her theatrics, regardless of how perfectly wanton her voice sounded.

“Mandy,” Steve said dryly, seemingly much less amused than Billy, “Please, shut the hell up.”

“Why? It’s an honest question!” Mandy proclaimed excitedly, “I’m fucking clueless, seriously. I know you’ve told Tommy, and I like to believe you and me are better friends than you and Tommy. So, really, you should tell me.”

Steve paused, giving Mandy the serious and constipated look he always had on his face whenever Nancy Wheeler was brought up.

“She didn’t have to rev me up. I liked her, Mueller,” Steve stated, raising a single brow in Mandy’s direction, “Not that you’d know what that’s like.”

“What what’s like?” Mandy asked, mimicking Steve’s facial expression as she adjusted her arms around Billy’s neck, “Liking somebody? Blegh, gag me. I’d rather die, Steven.”

Billy tilted his head back to eye her, a smirk playing on his lips that had her giving him a dirty look from the corner of her eye.

“Says the virgin,” Billy mumbled to himself, and Mandy caught it, making a disgruntled expression at the side of his head.

“I’m a virgin by choice,” Mandy declared simply, “Boys are gross, and I don’t trust a single one of you or your pant-snakes.”

Billy merely shook his head, refusing to say anything in return. If it had been earlier in the night, he would have definitely ribbed her, but after the whole Carmichael situation being revealed to him, he was just going to drop it. He would’ve probably been walking into a minefield, anyway, and Mueller was being amusing enough without him even having to cajole her, so he kind of didn’t want to ruin it.

“Pant-snakes,” He snorted to himself, looking towards Harrington as he eyed him curiously. Steve looked like he had something to say, but Billy could tell by the way he was looking at Mandy that he did not want to say it in front of her.

“It’s a funny word for dick,” Mandy clarified, laughing mid-sentence when she thought herself funny, and Billy found himself chuckling at the gross choking sound she made as she was interrupted by a bout of her own laughter, “I was being funny.”

“Hilarious,” Billy reiterated wryly.

“Yeah, I thought so, too,” Mandy agreed cockily, nodding before looking back to Harrington, “So, Stevie, I believe I heard a past-tense. You _liked_ Nancy, huh? As in, not anymore?”

Steve gave her a bland expression, before replying forebodingly, “Don’t do it, Mandy.”

“Aw, c’mon, Steve! I’m great with secrets!!” Mandy cried out pitifully, “Who am I gonna tell? I have literally no friends who give a shit about what I have to say!”

“First of all, he’s here,” Steve declared, showcasing his clear dislike of Billy as he was not even willing to say his fucking name, “And I know him about as far as I can throw him.”

Mandy squinted at Steve from over Billy’s shoulder as Billy corrected him, “You don’t trust me as far as you can throw me.”

“What?” Steve’s face scrunched up, and Billy scowled at how stupid he was.

“You used the phrase wrong,” Billy drawled out slowly for him, and Mandy snorted in amusement from over his shoulder.

“He’s drunk, ignore him,” Mandy waved her hand in front of Billy’s face, and he wasn’t sure who the hell she was referring to as drunk, so he dropped it, “Anyway, so, Nancy, right? You were her first?”

“Mandy!” Steve admonished, and Mandy looked to him with pitiable innocence.

“What? I’m just curious! I don’t see what the big deal is!”

“Are you trying to harass me? Seriously, is this some kind of mind game?” Steve asked, whirling around to face them, expression stony, “Because congratulations! You win! Now leave me alone!” 

Mandy gaped, before she scoffed, glancing over to meet Billy’s gaze as he watched her from the corner of his eye, “So defensive, jeez. He totally took her v-card.”

Billy snorted at her brilliant deduction skills.

“And she took his fucking heart in return,” Mandy finished, rolling her eyes, “Harrington played himself. Typical.”

Billy chuckled at her words, shaking out his head and glancing in Steve’s direction as he stewed.

“Typical?” Billy echoed curiously, and Mandy gave a little shrug with one shoulder.

“Isn’t it just?” Mandy sighed with feigned wistfulness.

“I was hoping you’d elaborate,” Billy clarified, and Mandy’s brows arched down at him.

Mandy gave him a wry look, “Well, feel free to keep hoping.”

“You really are annoying,” Billy insisted with a roll of his eyes, reaffirming his earlier sentiments.

“Then why are you so in love with me?” Mandy retorted in a nasally, mocking voice.

Good fucking question, Billy thought to himself.

* * *

When Steve Harrington first _really_ crossed paths with Mandy Mueller, it was because he followed the sounds of a girl screaming. Which was, _yeah,_ so totally Mueller.

He had been a sophomore at the time, had just made it on the varsity team, only as a bench player, but had still managed to get invited to a senior party nonetheless. He hadn’t ever felt so cool in all his life—a senior girl had actually given him her number that night! And as he had been stumbling up the steps, holding the hand of pretty girl from his English class and feeling numb and cozy from some sneakily spiked punch, he had heard her.

“Let me go! Let me go, you mother _fucker!”_ Her voice had been a raw, animalistic thing, desperate and pitchy, and Steve’s happy little drunk parade consisting of two people had stopped on the spot in the middle of the hallway, ears straining to hear better.

“Hold her down!” Another voice called, the muffled sound of it turning his stomach in a way that made all the liquor he ingested feel like a handful of glass. He heard shuffling and cursing, followed by the sound of something breaking, and his hand turned clammy in his new best friend’s manicured grasp. 

He hadn’t ever been more aware of how heavy his feet where when he pushed himself to move, shaking off the girl who had followed him up the staircase and jerking in the direction of the commotion. It couldn’t have been more than ten steps, but it felt like an entire century to Steve and his racing mind.

Steve turned the knob and pushed his shoulder into it at the same time, nearly flying into the dim room. Golden light spilled into the murkiness, illuminating a horrible scene before his eyes. It had seemed so wrong to witness it, he almost wanted to flee.

She had been pinned to the crumpled bed, a boy straddling her ribcage with one hand on her neck and another holding her wrist above her head, while another person held her right arm to her side, and the last pinned her legs down, hands sneaking beyond Steve’s line of sight underneath her skirt. 

Steve froze when he saw her, because he had actually recognized her. She was year younger than him, and accidentally bumped into him that very day, giving him a waning smile and a timid apology. He hadn’t given her a second thought at the time. She was just another girl at school then.

She only became Mandy when she promptly bit down on the arm holding her wrist above her head, and the guy above her roared out, “Mandy, you little fucking bitch!”

He let go of her wrist to slap her across the face, and Steve shouted out instinctively as he tried to come to her aid, “Hey, man! What the hell!?!”

Two boys stood from the bed at the same time of his aggressive approach, leaving the one straddling her as they rushed him together, and Steve hopped back as the first swing came, ducking under it and all but collapsing to the floor when he stumbled over something beyond his line of sight. The second boy made his presence known by kicking Steve as he was attempting to get back up, and Steve gave a guttural groan, the air leaving him like his ribcage was being played like an accordion. Another kick followed, his stomach flying up into his throat.

“Fuck!” A feminine voice shrieked, high and panicked, _“You!”_

Another male body dropped to the floor beside Steve, face marred with angry red lines running from his eyes to his mouth, hair askew, and neck imprinted with one perfectly circular bite mark. When the boy fell, it rattled a trophy off the dresser beside them, and it landed right before Steve’s eyes like a sign from God.

He picked it up just as he received another kick to his side, and instantaneously, after years of being conditioned by the tried and true classic, Whack-a-Mole, Steve whacked the boy’s foot as hard as possible, his canvas sneaker doing little to nothing to protect him from the blow. He howled in pain, grabbing his foot and hopping around on one leg as he exclaimed, “You little fucking twerp!”

Steve pushed himself to stand, and as he did, Mandy was atop the bed, holding onto a bedpost and kicking out with a heel to send another boy to the floor. They locked eyes for a single breath, before the bitten guy who had dropped from the bed was grabbing at him, writhing on the floor still and trying to pull at his pant leg. Mandy noticed this, and pounced from the bed to land directly on top of the boy’s back. Steve watched the air leave the boy in one croaking gasp, before he was being grabbed by the arm of his windbreaker, and yanked toward the door by a blur of crooked clothes and wild blonde hair.

“Run, run, _run!”_ She squealed, dragging him along behind her through the house, and he followed wordlessly, hearing a boom of commotion behind him as they wove their way through the party. 

They had both been winded by the time they found themselves outside the house, hiding around a dark corner near the garage door, and Steve leaned back against the wall, rubbing the side of his torso as she wiped her hands down her face, fingers trembling as her ragged breaths turned into hyperventilation. 

“Are you okay?” He found himself asking, and when her gaze finally jumped to his face, he found himself startled by the violent clarity of them.

Her breath gusted out of her, mouth parted as she spoke, “What’s your name?”

“Steve,” He replied simply, a little bit at a loss for words.

She merely nodded, letting out a laugh of her own that had her severe expression softening, “You were supposed to say you were my guardian angel. Or Prince Charming. Y’know, come onto me a little to make me feel better.”

Steve let out a sputter of a laugh, “Jesus Christ, are you crazy or something?”

Mandy merely laughed, before she was sobering and announcing dryly, “Mandy Mueller, actually.”

“You’re new,” Steve supplied, still trying to hold the throbbing spot on his flank, “Right?”

She nodded, and that was the first and last time Steve could ever remember her being gracious. She stepped to him and hugged him as she heard his words, plain and not said with any great conviction as they were, a stifled hiccup leaving her and her body shuddering slightly as she wrapped her arms around him, sounding almost sniffly as she muttered, “Thank you.”

All he had said in return to the feeling of her arms around him was, “Ow.”

It was kind of a terrible start to a relationship, Steve knew, but they had become wary allies after that.

The next day, when he was significantly less drunk, he had recognized the boys holding her down as boys from the basketball team. They also had played football, and lacrosse, and two were also on the wrestling team. They recognized him immediately when he had filed into the locker room, and the insults began then. They hadn’t ever really stopped until those boys graduated, but whenever he had Mandy beside him, he never had to worry about being outgunned. 

They had gravitated to one another out of necessity after that. Mandy had caught the attention of the wrong guy, and had been burned, and in saving her, Steve managed to find himself in the same predicament. He didn’t regret it though. 

At the end of it all, he and Mueller had become popular from it. Every kid in school knew who they were, because Matthew Carmichael, Bradley Tate, Tim Langley, and all their asshole friends never let the high school populous forget their names. If they were within eyesight, Mandy and Steve were in for trouble. They cursed their names, and called them twerps, and shits, and retards, and tried roughing them up at every chance they got, but still. When those boys left, Mandy Mueller and Steve Harrington became untouchable. They had been the kids who fought leviathans and conquered, and everyone saw them as heroes. They were elevated from then on out.

Mandy didn’t take it well, but Steve flourished in the attention. He was a like a baby chick still hidden in its egg, and in the warmth the world had basked him in, he was finally freed from his shell. He became what he had always meant to be—well liked. He got tons of dates, and got first string, and there was nobody who would ever dream to mess with him—not when he was the guy who kicked a handful of seniors’ asses. 

And the whole time, Mandy had been around. A distant voice in a crowded room, a loud clatter from beyond his line of sight, or an even face and a mild greeting that passed him in the halls. She wandered, but Steve recognized that was always how she’d been. A little lost, and a little listless. It didn’t really matter to him. She still got invited to all his parties, and still met all his friends and girlfriends, and sometimes he even saw her in class. They caught up with back pats and muttered greetings, but they were two separate planets. They gravitated around one another, but they never collided. 

Sometimes, he thought she wasn’t even the same girl he encountered that night. In fact, it occurred to him that that might’ve never been who she was at all. A moment of her desperation had drawn him to her, but it was a moment of his weakness that had drawn her to him—he had run into that room to save her, and when they left, it was her saving him. That was always going to be the way of their relationship, Steve realized. 

Steve tried to keep Mandy from falling into trouble, and Mandy tried to keep Steve from getting in over his head. 

However, as Steve was realizing with a potent amount of clarity, it didn’t matter how much they tried for anything, they always ended up mixed up together in the same crazy bullshit.

“Can you stop pinching me? It’s annoying,” Mandy’s voice broke through Steve’s reminiscing, and he glanced over to catch sight of Billy Hargrove smiling his evil smile while glancing back at Mueller as she leaned her head over his shoulder. 

“Y’know, this is charity, Princess,” Billy began, and Mandy narrowed her eyes down at Hargrove, lips pursing, “I don’t really have to even be carrying you. I’m just being generous.”

“How nice of you,” Steve drawled out dryly from outside of their staring match, rolling his eyes. 

Billy Hargrove was a power-hungry blockhead, who liked to make everything a fucking game. He was a bully who pushed people to the ground and called himself heroic when he swooped down to help them back up. Billy Hargrove was a proud, crowing cockerel, who wanted nothing more than to rule the roost.

Steve just found him annoying. His swagger, his smile, and that stupid way he talked when he thought he was going to say something clever or funny—it was all annoying. Billy Hargrove was majorly _annoying;_ every single thing he did annoyed _the **shit**_ out of Steve.

Maybe, Steve thought, he would have just ignored him, if it hadn’t been for the fact that he decided to make friends with Tommy—and the fact that he decided to try and harass Mandy into being interested in him—and the fact that he joined the team and was gunning for his position—and the fact that Hargrove just really wanted to insert himself into every aspect of Steve’s life in general. Hargrove was bloodthirsty. If there was any small weakness he could sniff out, he would go in for the kill—and conveniently, Billy Hargrove showed up in Hawkins the second Steve’s life was completely hemorrhaging. He found himself a meal, and he had honed in on Steve. What a total dick.

If Billy wanted to be top dog, Steve would let him have it. If Billy wanted to call himself a lady-killer and play the game, Steve wouldn’t get in the way. But if Billy thought he was going to show up in Hawkins and take over Steve’s life, he really had another thing coming. 

Billy rose his brows, cocking his head in Steve’s direction, his expression ridden with obvious signs he was more than excited for a chance to fuck with Steve’s head. 

“Oh, please,” Mandy snorted, drawing Billy’s attention away from Steve as she announced conceitedly, “Like you didn’t totally beg me to climb on you. Admit it, you just wanted a chance to say that Mandy Mueller took a ride on you. You’re so desperate.”

Billy furrowed his brows, eyes narrowing dangerously, before he was dropping his hands from Mandy’s legs in revenge. Mandy shrieked, hands winding around Hargrove’s neck, and jerking him back as she tried to avoid falling on her ass. It didn’t work, and Steve ended up watching as Hargrove struggled to escape Mueller’s hold on his throat as he choked, before both of them were collapsing on their collective backs like a couple of helpless turtles.

“What the hell?!” Mandy cried out, groaning and shoving Billy off of her lap with a malicious look, “Are ya kidding me right now?!”

“You cut off my air supply!” Billy shot back, shoving her right back as she stumbled to her feet, “You crazy bitch!”

Mandy staggered sideways, before she was booting him right back onto the ground, and a deep grumble escaped Hargrove as he popped back up, malcontent clear on his features.

“You got a little neck, that’s not my fa— _Aack!”_ Mandy flopped down flat onto her face after struggling to shake her leg away from Hargrove, who had grabbed her ankle and attempted to yank her back onto the ground in retribution for being knocked over.

Steve shifted his weight as he crossed his arms and watched the two of them grapple with one another on the ground, bickering and blustering like two mean children in a sandbox. 

“Bitch!”

“Tramp!”

“Rude-ass!”

“Yeah, and what are you gonna do about it, huh?” Mandy called out mockingly, and Hargrove locked her in a headlock, giving her a noogie that had her squealing and cursing in a pitch that Steve was positive only dogs could hear.

“I don’t know, Queenie,” Billy reigned contemplating as he continued his ministrations, his voice breathless for a moment before he trained it back to its usual irritating drawl, “What am I gonna do, huh?”

“Oh, you evil troll—“ Mandy sputtered, trying to wriggle out of his hold, body writhing and kicking as she cried out, “Steve, help!!”

Hargrove rolled them over so he could peer over to Steve tauntingly, as he called out in a high-pitched imitation of Mueller, “Yeah, Steve, help!”

While Billy was busy jeering and making fun of her, his attention focused on Steve, Mandy fumbled around Hargrove’s belt line, her hands obstructed from Steve’s sight. Finally, after a few seconds of Billy tossing his head back and laughing riotously, he was cut short.

“Ha! What are you doing asking a pussy like Harrington for help for, Queenie? You think he’s gonna come save you, huh? I think he knows better than— _Yeeooow! My balls!”_

Mandy yanked Hargrove’s underwear right up his ass, giving him the wedgie to end all wedgies, and Steve found himself laughing hysterically at the sound Billy made, his voice rising to the pitch of a little girl’s.

Hargrove still held Mandy’s head under his arm, but Mandy had stopped struggling, instead opting to howl with laughter as she flopped lifelessly to the ground.

_“Holy shit!”_ Mandy screeched out, her voice breaking as she struggled to breathe through her laughter, “I think I’m gonna pee myself! What was that sound you just made?!”

“You’re such a bitch, Mueller!” Hargrove roared as he released Mandy, pushing her away from him as he tried to readjust himself. Mandy crawled away from him, still heaving with laughter, and struggling to stand as her laughter rocked her whole frame.

Mandy spied Steve, waving him over as she continued gasped for breath between her bouts of laughter, “Did you see the way—?“

Steve walked toward her, laughing at her disheveled form and the way Billy Hargrove was wiggling around in his jeans over her shoulder, discomfort evident on his features. Steve leaned down and gave her his hand, and Mandy took it, trying to yank herself off the ground, before she was laughing again and plopping down onto her ass.

“I’m weak with laughter, Steve! My body won’t work, help!”

“Jesus Christ, Mandy,” Steve snorted, taking the hand he still held and using it to tug her up into standing. She stumbled on her heeled feet, boots thunking against the ground as she tottered upright. When she was finally done wobbling, Steve took his hand from her, and she wiped at her already smeared makeup, “You look crazy, man.”

Mandy wiped away the water that had escaped her eyes in her hysterical laughter, sniffling and sighing, “Ah, thanks, Stevie.”

She ran a hand over her hair, pushing all the blonde tangles back over her shoulder, trying to clear her vision, and once she did, she looked to him with a grin, locking her eyes on him and opening her mouth to speak.

“Hey!” She was cut off by Hargrove’s astringent voice, “What the fuck is that?”

Mandy paused, whirling around to look at Billy, while Steve glanced over his own shoulder in the direction in which Hargrove was pointing. 

His breath froze in his lungs, his chest squeezing for a moment as he spotted it. It let out a curious, chittering call, rising up on its hind-legs for a moment, and all Steve could think was that he didn’t have a baseball bat.

“What?” Mandy called distantly from over his shoulder, her tone showcasing her obvious wariness of Hargrove, and the demo-dog in the middle of the road jumped back slightly, releasing a loud, warning shriek in their direction.

The sounds of movement whispered from behind him, and still, Steve couldn’t move his eyes away from the sight before him. Because they were meant to all be gone, right? No more weird monsters were supposed to be running around now that the portal was closed and the lab shut down. But this thing was really here, Steve was almost positive. He shook out his head, and it was still there. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, and yeah, it was definitely still there, looking to them and making those weird, alien sounds.

“You got any idea what the hell that thing is, Harrington?” Hargrove’s usual riotous voice was frighteningly soft as he shouldered up to Steve’s right wing.

“Uh,” Steve mumbled distractedly, eyes following the feet of the monster as it paced in a four foot circle, looking predatory and seeming to contemplate coming closer to them, “No idea.”

Mandy appeared on his other side, boots clacking loudly in the near deafening silence the entire forest had fallen into around them. The monster paused, whipping its head around and making a great, ugly sound in their direction.

“Its face just opened up,” Hargrove announced, his voice sounding somehow both bored and panicked, “You just saw that, right, Harrington? The face—opening up like a—”

“Yeah,” Steve nodded, eyes trained on the monster, and his pulse thrumming like a hummingbird at Hargrove’s words confirming what he already saw, “Um, I think we should turn around.”

“Uh—” Billy began quietly as Mandy’s voice broke over his murmur, not even bothering to lower her volume.

“What’s it protecting?”

Steve glanced at her then, as she stood beside him, squinting into the darkness.

“What? Who cares?” Billy hissed to her, “Look at that thing, it’s a fucking freak of nature.”

“Wait,” Mandy put her hand up for pause, her voice dreamy like she was lost in thought for a moment, before she declared with sudden intensity, “There’s another animal—listen!”

“Wha—“ Steve began, but Mandy waved her hands around in his face.

“Shut up!”

All three quieted, trying to hear what Mueller was talking about, and even though Steve didn’t hear anything over the roar of his pulse, Billy seemed to, sighing exasperatedly from over his shoulder.

“Whimpering,” He declared lifelessly, sounding bitter and irritated all at once, “Sounds like a dog in pain, or something.”

“Was it—?“ Mandy paused, going wide-eyed, “Was that thing gonna—?“

“We should get out of here,” Billy suggested, glancing to Harrington briefly, both boys seemed to be on the same page. Quiet panic settled within each of them, and Steve found himself nodding as Hargrove patted his shoulder, turning around without Mandy and Steve to begin doubling back. Mandy made a sound of distress in the back of her throat from beside Steve—a small, unsettled, contemplative hum.

“I’m gonna go check it out,” Mandy declared forcefully, stomping passed Steve, her fists clenched at her sides, which Steve snagged as she tried to pass him.

“Are you crazy?!” Steve whispered out heatedly, swinging her closer to him, “That thing—“

“Is gonna try to eat Fido! And that shit’s not happening on my watch, Steve!” Mandy insisted, ripping her arm out of Steve’s hold, before she was running off towards the demo-dog, knotted hair bouncing in her wake as she shouted into the cold night, “Hey, you little asshole!!”

The demo-dog reared up at her voice, giving a long, shrieking roar in her direction as she closed in on it, before it was back on all fours and pacing in a circle, chittering and clicking uneasily. 

“Get out of here!” Mandy yelled as she got within range of it, kicking out with a foot that had the malformed animal hissing in warning, before backing away from her reach and lowering itself into a crouch. It hunched in on itself, opening its mouth wide and showcasing all its barbed teeth for Mueller, before she was swinging her leg right across the side of its head, sending it to the ground as she roared right back, “I told you to— _GET—THE—FUCK_ —outta here, Shithead!!”

It rolled back onto its feet, making itself small as she kicked at it again, and it trilled in pain, wailing with a low gurgle, before it was launching itself in her direction. Mandy side-stepped it, letting it pounce right back into the middle of the road, before she froze, eyes empty as the demo-dog rolled back onto its feet and screeched at her, opening its mouth with promise to maim.

Steve jerked into motion as he spotted the stillness in Mueller’s form, and from behind him, he heard the sound of boots against the pavement. 

Hargrove passed him as they both ran in Mandy’s direction, shouting to Mandy’s still form, “Hey! What the hell are you waiting for?! Look alive, Dumbass!”

Mandy jolted out of whatever trance she was in, head swerving around in their direction, and the monster before her cried out, giving a high, keening screech as it tucked its tail and backed away from her. It shrunk low to the ground in fear as it heard Billy Hargrove’s cutting voice, finally turning tail and skittering back into the shadowy forest off the side of the road.

“Are you fucking crazy!?!” Billy bellowed once the two of them closed in on her, grabbing her shoulders and shaking Mandy’s form as she blinked dazedly, “Huh?! Answer me!!”

Mandy’s eyes stared into his face, gaze distant, as if she were looking through him, and Steve tried to separate Billy from her as he shook her violently.

“Hey, man,” Steve began, grabbing at Hargrove’s arm and trying to drag him out of Mueller’s space, “Leave her alone.”

Billy shrugged him off, brows furrowed as he turned his angry expression onto Steve, “And what the fuck is wrong with you for letting her run off like that?! Seriously, Harrington, you can’t handle one little girl!?”

“I—!“ Steve began, his voice indignant, even though he had no clue as to how he planned to finish that statement.

“You what?!” Hargrove shouted over his stammering words, his voice sardonic and acidic, “You got your head up your ass, Harrington?! Well, what the fuck is new?! No one’s fucking surprised!”

“Guys,” Mandy muttered, and Steve’s attention was drawn to her from over Billy’s shoulder, just in time to catch a punch to the swollen side of his face. Steve staggered back, releasing a shout as pain exploded through his eye and into his brain. Mueller’s voice sounded as Steve felt Billy pawing at his shirt, trying to yank him upright again, “Hey, hey! Let him go!!”

Mandy wedged herself between Steve and Billy, shoulder digging into the middle of Steve’s chest as she tried to shield him. Hargrove still had a hold on his shirt, and Mandy nudged her other shoulder into him, trying to shove him off, and Billy released Steve wordlessly, eyes glaring dangerously over Mueller’s frizzing, blonde head.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Mandy sneered from between the two of them, and Steve stepped back, hoping to give her enough space to back away, which, of course, she didn’t do. She pressed herself up against the front of Billy, straightening her spine to glare evenly into Billy’s eyes.

“Don’t fucking look at me like that, you psycho bitch,” Billy hissed at her, his voice echoing a low, boiling fury he carried, “You could have fucking killed yourself. You don’t know what the fuck that thing was!”

“So!?” Mandy asked loudly, her tone punctuating her irritation, “So fucking what?! Someone had to get rid of that thing! I mean, look—!”

Mandy gestured to the floor a few feet away, where a golden retriever with a leather collar laid, fur matted with blood as it whimpered and struggled for breath. Steve looked down at the dog and its helpless, pained gaze, before glancing back to Mandy with a pinched, somber expression. 

Hargrove was still before her, angry eyes trained on her, not even bothering to look at the ground. His gaze darted between each of her eyes, softening from hardened anger to a disgruntled confusion. A muscle jumped in his neck, and he stepped away from her wordlessly, glancing briefly to Harrington before looking to the dying animal on the floor.

Billy looked away from the dog with a swing of his head, eyeing the darkened treeline on the side of the road with furrowed brows.

Finally, he bit out a cold, “Congrats, Mueller. You risked your life for a dog that’s gonna die anyway. Good job, Idiot.”

The words seemed to fuel Mandy’s anger, and Steve watched as she squared her shoulders and asked in a nasty, mocking tone, “How do you think it would feel, Billy? To feel something eating out your fucking intestines as you died? Your last moments on earth, and a monster is rooting around inside you looking for something tasty—does that sound like a nice way to go?”

The answer was plain on Hargrove’s face, his lips pinching into a straight line as he looked pointedly away from Mueller. 

“It’s just gonna suffer longer now,” Hargrove retorted quietly, refusing to look in Mandy’s direction.

Steve looked between them, before he muttered, “Do you guys think… we should… uh, well… put it out of its misery, or something?”

Hargrove shot him an agitated look as Steve suggested it, and Mandy sighed, ignoring him as she walked over to the animal and plopped down next to it as it laid dying. She patted its head mechanically, looking down at its face as it watched her soberly from the corner of its eyes.

“I’m not gonna kill a dog,” Hargrove grumbled out huffily, looking repulsed just by the thought of it, “You’re some kinda monster, Harrington.”

Steve raised his brows, gaping speechlessly as Billy walked to the other side of the street, shifting uneasily on his feet as he glanced to Mandy sitting with the dog, before he was turning his back to the scene and pulling out a carton of Marlboros. Steve watched as Hargrove stared into the darkness of the forest, busying himself with lighting a cigarette, before Steve himself was turning his attention from Billy, and wandering over to the place Mandy was kneeling.

When Steve got over to her, the first thing that Steve thought as he watched her run her hands over the matted fur, was the fucking smell was too much for him. He didn’t know how Mandy was remaining so calm when it smelled like the worst mix of pennies, and sickening sweetness, and musty, wet dog, but Steve put on a brave face, dropping down beside her and stroking along the dog’s uninjured spine to calm the animal. It whimpered louder, and Mandy quietly stroked its face, with intent to relax it. The dog licked at her hand, whining, and Mandy exhaled a heavy breath.

“I expected a smaller dog,” Mandy announced tonelessly, “She’s not a fido.”

Steve peered over the dog’s head, spying a brass tag with the name Goldie.

Shit, the dog had a name. The cute dog had a cute name, and cute, big, honey eyes—and it was dying. Steve found himself pinching his lips to avoid getting emotional. He was not going to cry. No way. 

He cleared his throat, hardening his voice as he stated, “Goldie. Good name for a golden retriever.”

Somewhere, over his shoulder, he could have sworn he heard the distant scoff of Billy Hargrove. 

“Mhm,” Mandy hummed in agreement, shrugging slightly as she ran her fingertips softly over the slope of the dog’s nose, following the direction of the fur and following it up until she reached the forehead of the animal. She let her hand settle there for a moment, staring vacantly at the dog as it breathed weakly, its whimpers quieting.

Steve remained still, collapsed beside her and feeling like shit after the long, shitty night he had, and watched as the dog’s breath left it one last time. Steve watched with anticipation for another struggling pant from the animal, but none came, and he found himself squeezing his eyes shut against the burning sensation building up behind his eyelids. A long, shitty night, and now a dead dog—shit really couldn’t get worse. Steve sighed, and Mandy resumed stroking Goldie’s head for a moment, looking into lifeless eyes with no expression. 

Steve thought maybe he should comfort her, but as he looked at her even expression, he lowered the hand he had poised to settle on her shoulder. Mandy didn’t look sad or angry, but rather, thoughtful. She gave Goldie one last pat, hand sliding down her face to close the dog’s eyes, before she was staggering up to her feet.

“Alright,” Mandy said in an exhale, voice bland and crude as she patted off her hands, “Dog’s dead now, Hargrove, you can quit hiding over there.”

Steve choked on a sound of bewilderment, and Billy whipped back around with pursed lips around a fresh cigarette.

“Fuck you,” Billy muttered miserably, taking a puff from the cig at the corner of his mouth.

Mandy looked back down at the dog, before glancing into the murky darkness of the woods, “Whatever, the blood’s gonna start attracting animals soon—so we better go.”

Hargrove took a long puff of his cigarette, “Oh, you don’t feel like fighting any bears or bobcats tonight, Queenie? And here I was thinking you were just warming yourself up for something bigger.”

Mandy’s nostrils flared in irritation at Billy’s taunting words, before she was marching off down the road wordlessly. Steve fell into step after her, and further behind them, he heard the jingle of Hargrove’s jacket zipper and heavy footfalls as he jogged to catch up to them.

The road seemed never-ending, the hazy darkness of night making navigation troubling. Around them, in the bleakness of the trees that surrounded them, casting spindly, inky shadows around their feet, animals called hauntingly—owls hooting, and bats squeaking by, and birds of prey shrieking into the night. Steve looked around him, squinting into the darkness as a particularly close rumble sounded right behind him, only to see nothing but a pair of eyes in the dense forest. 

“Mandy!” Steve hissed out desperately, “I think there’s something in the forest back there!”

Mandy turned around, glancing to the direction he was gesturing, before she was raising her brows over Steve’s shoulder, “See anything when you walked passed, Hargrove?”

At being addressed, Billy finally blurted out a caustic, “Oh, okay, so no one’s going to say _anything_ about that mutant dog thing? Seriously?! Did that shit look normal to you two? ‘Cause it sure as shit did not look normal to me!”

Steve looked to Mandy, hoping she would have a reply, and she did not disappoint, “What’s there to even say? It was some—I don’t know! Whatever it was, it was malformed, okay? Like, an escaped experiment from some secret government lab, or something.”

That did not seem to appease Billy, and he continued vehemently, “Its whole face opened. Its whole fucking face was one big mouth!”

Mandy sighed, head rolling back as she looked up tiredly to the sky, before tilting her chin back down to look to Billy as she drawled, “Yeah, and it had no eyes, and killed somebody’s dog, and was eating somebody’s fucking dog when we came across it. I know, it’s weird, okay? I get it. But I’m too tired to even begin to make sense of that thing. I don’t even know if I’m gonna make it home tonight. I’m seriously considering a nap in these spooky woods at this point. So please, let’s save all the arguing and yelling for the morning, alright? I can’t do it anymore tonight.”

“Fine, as long as we’re all on the same page,” Billy grunted, seemingly just as exhausted as Steve and Mandy for a brief moment, and all three teens returned to their bumbling pace. 

No one spoke for the rest of the trek, the good mood having died off with Goldie the golden retriever. Billy lumbered beside Steve, and Mandy marched ahead of the two of them, her stride slightly disjointed, but nonetheless, keeping good pace. Steve could practically hear the way they all creaked with the wariness of the entire night, and just as he thought that, Billy cracked his neck from beside him, groaning slightly before he was breaking off from him, and Steve turned to watch him bewilderedly.

“Uh, where the hell are you going?” Steve called to Hargrove’s back, catching Mandy’s attention ahead of them.

Billy turned around as he replied, pointing up to a sign that read: Old Cheery Rd, “This is my street.”

Mandy squinted, lips pursed, “You’re not coming back with us to Steve’s?”

Billy shook his head, and Mandy cocked her head in his direction before glancing to Steve with an unreadable look, “Alright then. Try not to get eaten out here on your own.”

Billy snorted in amusement, waving to them lazily as he continued down the street, “I’ll try just for you, Queenie.”

Mandy sighed, rolling her eyes, before looking to Steve and shaking her head. Both of them stopped to watch Billy’s broad back as he grew smaller and more distant, before Mandy was turning back toward their destination, grumbling out, “Lucky son of a bitch is on the fucking homestretch and we got another half hour at least.”

Steve chuckled at her words, catching up to her and patting her back encouragingly as he suggested, “We can probably make it quicker if we cut through the reserve.”

Mandy glanced to him, eyes alight at the suggestion as she shrugged, “We’ll probably get eaten by wild animals, but hey, death sounds like a vacation at this point.”

They did not get eaten by wild animals, and they made it to the stone street sign that read Loch Nora in twenty minutes. Mueller had tossed her head back and shouted to the sky, tossing her hands in their air with a wild cheer once she spotted the engraved sign, and Steve had to shake his head as they continued down the street illuminated by house lights.

As they neared his house, empty beer cans began to litter along the sides of the street, and more parked cars lined the road. Both of them passed a car with condensation built up on the windows, the small compact rocking on its wheels, and Mandy snickered as she banged loudly on one of the foggy windows, making the couple inside scream in terror. She took off down the street, and Steve gaped briefly, before laughing along with her and sprinting the last block home along side her.

When they finally arrived at his house, they both stumbled into the open door, looking around at the destruction around them.

“Tomorrow,” Mandy finally spoke as Steve was busy looking at huge puddle of punch in the entryway, catching his attention and making him look to her with raised brows, “I’ll call someone to fix the… uh… y’know…”

She pointed up at the banister over-looking the first floor, where the railing had splintered off, and Steve nodded to her, understanding her meaning, “Thanks, Mandy.”

“Yeah, of course, Steve,” Mandy shrugged easily, “I’ll get it sorted for you, one less thing to worry about, right? When are your parents getting back?”

“Wednesday,” Steve replied easily as they both made their way through the house, finding themselves in the mostly untouched dining room. Steve pulled out a chair and dropped into it, while Mandy hopped onto the table, beginning to struggle with her boots. Steve watched her shuck them down her legs, then strain to rip them off her feet, before finally asking, “Need help?”

“Yes, please,” Mandy replied, flopping back onto the table as he stood and lifted her leg, beginning to pull at the bottom of her shoe. It wouldn’t come off, and Steve eventually gave one harsh tug that had him staggering back into the wall behind him with the troublesome boot in hand. Mandy sighed, before she was leaning up on her elbows and looking to him as he dropped her shoe and moved toward the next foot, “Wednesday, huh? Well, that’ll give you sometime to hide the evidence of this catastrophe.”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed, yanking on the next shoe, which slid off with a lot less struggle, and dropping that to the floor, “I’ll need all the time I can get. Remind me not to have any more parties, Mueller.”

“Or maybe don’t let me find out about them,” Mandy suggested, brows raised apologetically in his direction, “Sorry, Steve. I didn’t know—“

Steve sighed, shaking his head, “I know you didn’t, Mandy. It wasn’t your fault.”

Mandy said nothing for a moment, and Steve moved back to his seat, plopping back into it and staring at the shattered vase on the table before him. Mandy sat back up, looking to him tentatively, “Do you mind if I sleep over? Radner slashed my tires.”

Steve placed his elbows on the table and hung his head, “Sure thing, Mandy.”

“I really am sorry, Steve,” Mandy repeated quietly, staring at the wall before her with a far away look in her eye, before she was glancing back him. Steve lifted his head to look at her, with her weird, empty eyes and her pretty, youthful face pulled into a guilt-ridden expression.

“For what? I already said it wasn’t your fault this time, don’t apologize,” Steve sighed with a shrug, brows furrowing in confusion.

Mandy looked away briefly, crossing her legs and swinging them, “I’m not a very good friend to have.”

Steve laughed at her statement, and she turned to eye him exasperatedly, “Is that it?”

“Well, don’t laugh!” Mandy whined out, “I’m being serious!”

“I already know you’re not the greatest friend to have,” Steve announced, making her frown at him, “You only come around when you feel like it, and you literally are mean, all the time. You’re like an unwilling house pet, y’know? You ever meet those indoor cats that you can tell hate their owners? You’re like that.”

Mandy gaped at his explanation, before she was snapping her jaw shut, “Well, I meant that I kinda come with drama, not that I’m a mean person, or a hateful cat, or whatever, but okay.”

She pursed her lips and furrowed her brows as she pondered further his words, and Steve sighed, “It’s alright, y’know? I’m just saying, I don’t think you’re a bad friend, just that you’re kinda a bad person in general. I’m know you do your best.”

“Uh,” Mandy droned out, “Right. Thanks… _I guess_.”


	17. Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billy Hargrove has a rough night, and an even worse morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol, so first things first, this chap is late and I'm so sorry, guys! <3
> 
> BUT ALSO!!! LokiForever, buddy ol' pal, look at what I did. I did **The Thing™**
> 
> and to everyone who comments/kudos/bookmarks/subscribes, Y'ALL KNOW I LOVE YOU!!! I swear, you brighten my day! I absolutely love talking to you guys!! <3!! You are everything and totally the best motivators in the world, lol.
> 
> also, p.s. **TW for child abuse, lmao, b/c i rly wrote a whole ass story about some abused bully and have miraculously managed 16 chaps of avoiding it, but now it's decided to come up like day old seafood. Gross. Anyway, GOOD LUCK, EVERYONE lmao

It had been a long night—a long night of drinking, and fighting, and getting arrested, and having to watch a fucking dog die. It had been the longest, shittiest night Billy Hargrove had ever survived.

He remembered getting home, walking through the mist that blanketed the dark night, and trying to pull his keys from his front pocket, only to find them missing. He checked all is pockets, finding nothing, before trying to open the front door, only for that to be locked. With a sigh, he marched around the house, spying an open window that he knew went to Max’s room. 

“Hey!” Billy hissed to the open window, and a little redhead appeared from inside, eyes just peeking over the window seal, “Yeah, Maxine, you!”

Max rose her brows, her face sliding further into view, “Uh... yeah?”

“Go open the front door,” Billy pointed towards the front of the house, and when Max gave him a dull look, Billy tacked on mercilessly, “Or I’m telling your mom that you snuck out to go to a high school party tonight!”

Max frowned, before rolling her eyes and disappearing from sight.

When she opened the door for him, Billy was quick to shoulder passed her, and Max huffed silently in reply, shutting the door with a quiet creak before turning the lock and trailing after him.

“What took you so long to get home?” Max whispered into the pitch black of the house, and Billy stopped on spot, the floor whining under his feet as he rocked his weight before spinning around to face her.

“What the hell were you doing at that party?” Billy retorted coldly, his voice a near silent hiss.

“Um,” She began, her voice small, and Billy already knew she was going to lie to him just by the uncertainty in her tone. For as smart as Maxine was, she was still only, like, thirteen, and the little shit couldn’t tell a good lie to save her life, “One of my friends—“

“Which friend? The Sinclair kid?” Billy cut over her timid words, his voice bland and clearly displeased, “I warned you about him already, didn’t I, Max?”

“It wasn’t Lucas—“

“Then who?” Billy fired back, his voice cold and demanding.

Max stammered, obviously scrambling for coherent thought, “U-uh—um, well, Dustin Henderson—uh, I don’t know. He, um, well, needs a tutor, or something—he’s, like, a huge idiot, and—“

Who the hell was Dustin Henderson? Billy squinted into the darkness, and as he stood there stupidly, trying to find any fucking sense in Max’s words, she was shuffling away from him, rambling under her breath the whole time. Billy moved forward rapidly, snatching the sleeve of her shirt and dragging her back to stand before him.

“So you took your friend to Steve Harrington’s party? To find him a tutor? Really, that’s the story you came up with?”

“Steve is his, like, tutor, I guess,” Max replied, her voice small and sounding almost a little lost, and all Billy could see of her was her smaller silhouette, so he had no idea what dumb expression she had on her face.

“Steve Harrington is an idiot,” Billy declared, “Lie better, Max.”

“Well, I don’t know that! He’s not tutoring me!”

“Well, I’m telling you—!” Billy froze, his lowered tone stopping all together when a light turned on from underneath his dad’s door. He glanced to Max, seeing her wide-eyes reflecting the small stream of light coming from down the hall, before both of them were tip-toeing into their respective rooms, looking like they were waiting for a bomb to go off. 

By the time they were both inching around the closed door, the sound of a toilet flushing was sounding, before the light was turned off again. Billy looked to Max as she lingered in her doorway, eyeing him warily, before he was moving silently into his room and closing the door with a tight-lipped expression.

It looked like he’d have to wait until tomorrow to get any information from his stepsister, and it would only give her more time to make up a better lie. God fucking damn it.

* * *

The air was stale, and the wind blew cold, cutting into him bone deep. 

Billy couldn’t really remember how he got there, only that he couldn’t find his keys, and that kind of sucked. He squinted around, taking in the distant storm clouds and grey, sunless skies, not recognizing the skyline. He glanced towards the broken street sign, trying to make sense of the letters and being unable to. It was so worn and dirt-covered that it was completely illegible. 

He scratched the back of his head, looking around for something familiar, and it was then that he spotted it. 

The body of a dog, with a head like a venus flytrap, and the ugly, mottled skin of a fucking corpse. 

The memories of the night flooded him then—red punch that had the distinct bite of alcohol, and Mandy Mueller’s too long legs in a too short skirt, and blood on his knuckles, and those cuffs that cut into his skin, and the way that fucking monster opened its ugly, abominable face, dripping blood as it screeched.

The monster chirped curiously in his direction, and he grimaced, brows drawing down on his face as he recoiled a few steps. It rose up on its hind legs, cocking its head and making louder chattering sounds, and Billy looked around for anything else that could have caught its attention. And nope, it was just him there with that ugly fucking thing. Shit.

The abandoned street he stood in the middle of echoed with similar sounds to that of the creepy-crawly in front of him, and Billy looked behind him to spy more ugly monster dogs prowling out from the shadows. Panic flooded him, and he found himself whipping his head around for anything to fight them off with. Nothing in particular stuck out in his mind, the entire span of road before him desolate of anything, and all he could think was to flee to the house closest to him on the street. He looked over, ready to jump into action, only to find two of those monsters prowling along the lawn. Double shit. 

Okay, so they were closing in, he thought rather haplessly as he tried to space himself evenly between all of the low crouching forms in the hanging mist around him. He soon realized he was being herded in a specific direction, and it almost set him on fire with frenzy at the thought of being herded to his doom. Instead of allowing panic to overshadow his cognitive thought, he simply broke off from the direction he was being turned down on an empty road, spying an opening to get away and not even thinking-twice as his legs bursted into motion. He knew if he did, he’d only end up psyching himself out.

Taking off toward the side of the street, pace brisk but not quite a jog, he shoved his way into a ruined, dilapidated home for cover. The door fell off its hinges, the wood rotted and moist still. It was then that Billy realized just how damp the air was, and he hacked slightly, covering his mouth as a plume of some unknown mist splattered across his face. It reeked of mold and decay, and Billy grimaced, wiping his face in disgust.

He was so busy trying to remove the strangely mucus-y residue from his face that, when he was tackled from behind, he actually gave a shout of surprise as he dropped to the floor. The carpet beneath him squelched with an unnamed liquid that smelt distinctly musty, and he retched slightly, pulling the side of his head up from the ground to find that it was covered with a sticky, slimy substance. Abruptly, the weight on top of him disappeared, leaving Billy confused and suspiciously uninjured. He craned his neck over his shoulder to find nothing even there. How fucking creepy.

“What the hell are you doing here?” A dry voice asked from somewhere nearby, and Billy jolted at the familiar tone, pushing himself off the ground and stumbling upright as he looked behind him towards the source of the voice. He grimaced, bringing up a hand to shield his eyes as they settled on a glowing silhouette in the middle of the desolate street.

She stood not quite neon, but undeniably blinding, her whole form shining with flushing pinks and soft golds. A halo of shimmery, glittering light surrounded her, and the grey world around her sunk away. Even the dull pavement beneath her feet burned bright against his eyes. 

Billy squinted. 

“Queenie?” He questioned, his brows furrowing as he looked around for the freaky dog monsters that had just been closing in on him mere moments before. They weren’t anywhere in sight, and Billy found himself stepping back out of the house tentatively, looking both directions as he made his way cautiously back toward her.

Mandy didn’t reply to him, staring distantly to something Billy couldn’t see, and Billy closed in on her, grabbing her shoulder to turn her in his direction. She pivoted slightly, not quite facing him still as she kept her eyes trained on the sky.

She spoke, her voice echoing almost hauntingly into the near silent world around them, “You’ve gotten lost.”

A red flash of lightning lit up the sky at her words, looking like it cracked open the clouds for a brief moment. The world around him was painted in the angry color of blood, everything grey running red, and Mandy stood in the middle of it, encapsulated in her angelic golden halo, completely unaffected. Billy followed her eyes, trying to peer up into the darkened sky to see what had gotten her attention.

“Am I dreaming?” He muttered, and Mandy turned her face from the sky, eyes sliding over his form briefly, before she was nodding wordlessly. Billy rose his brows at her silence, before looking around in blatant confusion, “This is a nightmare?”

Mandy cocked her head at him, her diamond eyes silvery in the strange halo of color she was casted in, “Did you fall asleep?”

“What?” Billy narrowed his eyes in her direction, “What the hell kinda question in that?”

Mandy smiled, a flimsy, waning pull of her lips, “The kind that when answered may just find you the answers you seek.”

Okay, so this was definitely a dream, Billy thought. He was almost positive that the real Mandy Mueller would never try to play some Alice in Wonderland riddle game with him. Billy didn’t really think she had the kind of patience for that. He found himself humming in thought.

“So, this _is_ a dream,” Billy muttered to himself, and Mandy grabbed him suddenly.

“Yeah, it really is,” She began, grabbing his arm and tugging him along, eyes looking to the sky distractedly, “So, where do you want to go?”

The wind howled around them, and Billy braced himself, putting an arm up against the gust. Above the rush of air, he heard Mandy curse.

“Fuck it. You asked for it, Shithead.”

The wind whipped Mandy’s hair against her face, and she grinned wickedly, bright light beaming from her and blinding Billy momentarily. He closed his eyes against the dazzlingly painful colors she was emitting, and when his eyelids no longer burned with the fiery colors, he inched them open, blinking away the stars in his eyes.

“Holy shit,” Billy announced, before his feet were falling out from beneath him. Mueller caught him by the hand effortlessly in an act of strength only capable in dreams, tugging him back up, “This is… the night sky.”

“Outer space,” Mandy corrected, pointing down toward the blue marble they hovered over, “That’s earth.”

“Holy shit,” Billy repeated, squinting down in the direction she pointed, before looking back to her and raising his brows, “This dream is crazy.”

She simply smiled at him, lips looking perfect and sweet as she turned her attention back to the world at their feet, and Billy’s abdomen clenched as he watched her. She was just impossible. So detached and pretty, and just fucking mesmerizing. Before he knew what he was doing, he was stomping over a star dusted sky and grabbing Mueller’s face, closing the space between them with very little warning. 

She didn’t fight him like he thought she might, instead making a short sound against his lips that he felt more than heard as he took a long drag of her. She was overwhelming—warm, and sweet, and so fucking perfect. His lips felt scorched as they pressed into her soft mouth, and she shifted, humming against him. The sound ran all the way into his groin, and he found himself groaning in reply, nipping at her in hopes to taste her. 

Just a little, he thought, he just had to know. Her lips were soft as velvet and electrifying against him, and felt so fucking real that he almost wanted to cry. Even if it was a dream, he needed to taste her—he was starting to think he wouldn’t ever otherwise. 

Her smaller hands fumbled at his wrists, tugging at him gently as she fussed, before her lips parted just enough for her to gasp into his mouth, and he could almost taste her. Her fluttering breath was fruity like punch, with a kick of something distinctly alcoholic. She tried to yank out of his hold wordlessly, angling her chin down so she could have space to breathe, and Billy chased her, pushing forward as she backed off, catching her off-guard as she panted. He caught her plush upper lip between his teeth, nibbling tenderly and pressing his way into her pliable mouth. The second his tongue was taking a swipe, she was pinching her lips together and mumbling her distaste against his mouth. 

Kind of sucked, really, that even in his dreams Queenie was a priss, but on the bright side, she tasted vaguely like strawberry ice cream and strong liquor. Damn, it was dreamy. She tasted too good to be true, and he was sure that if he could dip in to taste her again, she would taste even sweeter. 

He tried backing off, pressing small kisses into her mouth to try to get her back to being all soft for him, but she was already over it. Nothing worked, not coaxing kisses or playful nips, and he groaned against her, pressing his forehead into hers as he pulled his lips from her mouth, deciding to just give it up. 

Fuck, she was infuriating—so _fucking_ infuriating that even his own head couldn’t imagine a scenario that she would ever want to kiss him back. 

He could dream up standing on a star-spangled sky, but god-forbid Ice Queen Mandy Mueller let him fucking tongue kiss her. Prissy girls really weren’t for him. He didn’t have the fucking patience. She would end up killing him. It really sucked that she was so pretty. 

“Are you done?” She breathed against his mouth, her scathing whisper almost profane to his ears, and Billy opened his eyes to find hers still closed, brows pinching together and turned up. 

He sighed heavily, kissing the corner of her mouth as he hummed against her skin. Her closed lids fluttered as he moved his hands from their hold on her face, letting his fingertips skim along the planes of her skin—the rise of her cheeks and curve of her jaw, following the lines of her neck, thumb finding her pulse like he had been looking for it all along. Her pulse skipped, and he ran the back of his hand against it, the busted knuckle of his index finger skimming across it as it jumped to his touch. 

It seemed to be the only part of her affected by him, and he dropped his head and pressed his lips against it. She jolted at the contact, and like that, the spell was broken.

The slap she gave him stung like a cold, winter wind, and his whole body felt like it was dunked in ice water. Yep, Billy thought, this was definitely a fucking nightmare. He pressed his hand into the sharp burning her strike left behind on his skin, turning his head to eye her with disbelief as she glared at him, face flushed and hair mussed.

“What the hell was that for?” He found himself biting out, even though he knew exactly what it was for.

Mueller crossed her arms, glowering at him, “No, what the hell was _that_ for?! Outer space just get you all hot n’ bothered, Hargrove? You’re such a creep! I can’t believe I actually saved you just now!”

“Saved me?!” Billy echoed incredulously, “From what? A nightmare?! Well, good job, Queenie, because now you’ve brought me right into this one!”

The dream Mandy gasped, “You’re the one who kissed me! So, you’re the one that gets to face the repercussions!”

“Repercu—? What?!” Billy replied, face scrunching up with bewilderment, before he announced hotly, “This is _my_ dream!”

“And it fucking sucks!” Mandy retorted viciously, jabbing an index finger into his chest. Billy snagged her arm mid-air, hand locking around her wrist, and she seized up, arm flexing against his stronger hold. She fought him without her usual vigor, and Billy yanked her back toward him, making her mutter childishly, “Ugh, let me go, before I make you regret it!”

“Oh, yeah?” Billy challenged, brows raising, “How do you plan on doing that, Queenie?”

Mandy stopped in her struggle, blinking as she focused her glistening eyes on him, “You’re really starting to make me angry, Hargrove.”

Billy chuckled, jerking his face towards her, making her rear back, “Oh, yeah? What are you gonna do about it?”

“I don’t think you wanna know,” Mandy seethed, her breath fanning across his skin.

“Hm,” Billy hummed, licking his lips with anticipation, “I think I do.”

“Okay,” She replied, her voice ringing out around him hollowly, “Remember, you asked for it.”

It all happened too fast. Her eyes slipped into white, her iris floating off to the back of her head, and Billy found himself trying to move away out of pure instinct. What he was looking at was unnatural, but he couldn’t break free, his body frozen with the overwhelming sensation of prickling numbness. He tried to let go of her as his palm began to burn against her skin, the sensation of phantom fire spreading up his wrist. It was a bitter scorching sensation that pierced all the way into his bones, and Billy gave a guttural shout, his body beginning to tremble against the pain, sweat building up against his temples and upper lip. He gritted his teeth, trying to rip himself away, but nothing was working. 

“You fucking bitch!” He screamed at her, “Knock it off!”

She laughed at him, looking like the fucking antichrist with her all-white eyes and her mocking, sing-song voice, _“I warned yoouuu.”_

Nausea rolled through him, and his head felt like a rocket taking off without him, leaving his body to navigate through waves of icy numbness and sweltering pain. He felt like his legs were going to give out, and he really needed to puke. He could still taste strawberry ice cream on his tongue and could suddenly feel the heaviness of liquor eating away at his stomach, and he was really ready to fucking puke. His knees buckled, his mind losing track of the ground for a moment, before stars were flying by his eyes, the sky winding around him as he spiraled down. Colors flashed by, white hot light dwindling as Mandy’s form slowly grew more distant, her face smirking down at him as he fell away—dark blue replaced her, followed by misty grays, and then purple, and pink, and orange, and yellow, and right before he could make impact, his stomach flying up into his ribcage—a bright, angry lightning strike of red seared into his eyelids. 

His body tumbled from his bed, sending blankets tangling around him as he slammed into the ground with a grunt. Billy blinked into the murky darkness of night, his vision spotted with psychedelic colors, veins of red and starbursts of pink and yellow and blue. They made his head spin, and Billy gave a stuttering breath, head lolling to the side from his haphazardly sprawled form, before he was closing his eyes against the nauseating dizziness that was tearing through him. He groaned, running his hands over his face and wiping away sweat as he tried to calm his racing heart and get ahold of his surroundings.

He wasn’t all there yet, still partially not awake. His head was still swimming in a sea of Mandy Mueller’s glowing angel face, and ice cream kisses, and mean words, and crazy, all-white demon eyes—and he could swear he still saw her, propped up on her elbows over the edge of his bed, looking down on him with that awful fucking smirk.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” He muttered, scowling at her as she peered over the edge of the bed, before begging dully, “No. Please.”

She laughed down at him, a pretty and suddenly very sinister sound to his ears, and he groaned, rolling over onto his stomach to disjointedly stagger to his feet. Oh, God, he thought once he was upright, standing still with the world orbiting around him. He was definitely gonna puke.

He stumbled from the room, bumbling in the dark through the only vaguely familiar house, before finally shouldering his way into the bathroom and collapsing on his knees before the toilet. His stomach lurched just as he was before the bowl, and he expelled a nearly black liquid, the edges of it bleeding red into the water. A tremor rocked through him, and he coughed wetly once his stomach was empty, spitting out the acrid taste of his bile. 

He moaned, rubbing his eyes, before reaching to flush the toilet. Once he was done, he collapsed back onto the floor, feeling better, but still like shit.

“I did warn you,” A voice whispered from the doorway, and Billy closed his eyes, running his hands through his hair.

“Not this again,” He complained pitifully.

The specter simply chuckled, “Yes, this again.”

“You’re an evil, demonic bitch,” Billy replied, voice hoarse, “Go away, _please._ ”

“Oh, look at that—you asked nicely this time,” Mandy replied coyly, her voice teasing, “Looks like I’ll have you trained before I know it. Alright then, Hargrove, I’ll go away. Oh, but one last thing—“

Billy restrained a groan at the grating edge of her voice. His head felt filmy like tissue paper, and Mueller’s tone was easily shredding right through it, making thought a little difficult at the moment. His eyes creaked open, head rocking so he could glance tiredly towards her form in the doorway. 

Billy pursed his lips at her as she leaned against the doorframe breezily, arms crossed and hips cocked. She was wearing that little black lace outfit from the night before, her hair disheveled in that way he liked it, and she was still glowing from within like she had in his stupid dream, her entire being silvery and golden and flushing all over. He couldn’t help but think that she looked like a heavy-metal angel. Wherever the fuck rockstars went when they died, they saw bitches like Mandy fucking Mueller with her disheveled hair and golden fucking halo. 

Just the sight of her made his head pound, and he found himself squinting as he muttered a gruff, clipped, “What?”

She looked to him curiously, glancing over her shoulder briefly, before asking, “Why?”

“Why what?” He drawled, brows raising as he felt something leak from his nose. Mueller glanced to his mouth briefly, brows screwed up.

“What was it about that moment?” She asked, eyes darting over his pathetically collapsed form, “Like, that made you kiss me?”

Billy found himself chuckling deliriously, running a hand down his sweaty face and watching as it came back with a smear of red. Distractedly, he mumbled out, “I don’t know. You have a nice smile. I don’t think you’ve ever smiled at me before tonight.”

She blinked, lips pulling down at she turned her eyes onto his face, leaving him frozen in an almost trance for a moment. His mind flashed with memories of the night previous—drinking, and fighting, and the way she grinned back at him from over her shoulder, storming across the room in the middle of all the chaos. Yeah, she had a really fucking pretty smile. It wasn’t a surprise, really, since she looked pretty doing almost everything. She got hit by a car, and fell out of a window, and hung from a roof—and she was always pretty. Mean as hell and angry in the moment, but still, really pretty.

“Hm,” She hummed, eyes shuttering slightly and a single brow raising as she looked at him, before she was sighing and tilting her chin up to squint at something he couldn’t see, “Next time you fall asleep, make sure you don’t go back to that place.”

“What?” Billy slurred, “What place?”

Mandy heaved a loud exhale as she reworded, “Next time you dream, Hargrove, go somewhere nice. Not to that nightmare again, got it?”

Billy frowned, “What the hell are you saying to me right now?”

Mandy rolled her eyes, her specter flaring with a gleam of bright orange, “How can you be this difficult when you look so fucking sad and sorry for yourself on the bathroom floor? Honestly, you infuriate me! Next time you dream, you better think of any-fucking-where else! Those ugly monsters hunt you down again? You better think of that fucking boardwalk and that beach back home, and that shitty restaurant you went to once with your friends and accidentally scored some weed. Okay? Anywhere else, Hargrove. Somewhere nice.”

Billy blinked, his mind recollecting the memory she was talking about with very hazy detail. He skipped school sophomore year to go to the beach. Spent money on the boardwalk, met an older girl with purple hair, and completely ditched his friends for at least three hours to make out with her and take a nap in the sun, and then accidentally found them later two blocks over at a shitty run-down diner. Ended up getting stoned with that older girl as the sun set over the ocean, and it was a fucking amazing memory. He hadn’t ever felt cooler. And even after he got home and his father found him, it still was the best fucking day ever. 

He pushed himself up, shaking out his head as he set his back against the wall and fully looked to the image of Mueller his mind created, “Why?”

“Because,” She replied evenly, brows raising knowingly in his direction, “I won’t be around to save you every time.”

Billy found himself scrunching up his nose, “Aren’t you just a-a— _I don’t know_ —imaginary friend or whatever? My mind made you, didn’t it? Shouldn’t you always be with me?”

Mandy paused, pinching the bridge of her nose with a noisy exhale, “You know what? I don’t fucking know. If you don’t know, then guess what? I don’t know! That’s how this works. So, sweet fucking dreams, I have to leave before I do something like burn down your house by accident.”

“Burn down my house?” Billy parroted incredulously, “What the fuck—“

“Shut up!” Mandy exclaimed before she disappeared with a glimmering poof, leaving behind shimmering golds and pinks in her wake.

What the fuck? Billy sneered at the space she vacated in the doorway, eyes unfocused and blurry as he mulled over the apparition’s parting words, before another voice was interrupting his thoughts.

“Oh, my God,” Maxine’s horrified whisper broke through his hazy mind, and his eyes jumped to her hilariously terrified expression, “You’re bleeding everywhere!”

Billy leveled her with a dull stare, before leaning over through the cramped bathroom and swinging the door shut in her face. She watched him stupidly the whole time, the door creaking slowly until it closed with a final click. 

From the other side of the door, Maxine’s muffled voice asked, “Are you dying, or something?”

“You wish, Max. Get lost,” Billy muttered, reaching behind him to push himself up with the porcelain edge of the bathtub. He perched himself on the edge of the tub and ran the shower to drown out her voice, planning to rid himself of the sticky crustiness of blood all over his face.

“Fine,” She announced snootily through the wood, “Be that way. I was just being nice, but whatever.”

Billy rolled his eyes, ignoring her and beginning to hastily shed his clothes. He planned to get into the shower and wash himself clean of the pain, and the blood, and that horrible goddamn nightmare.

* * *

So, he was in some seriously deep shit at the moment.

Steve Harrington stormed down the stairs in his boxer briefs and one of his dad’s old college sweatshirts, hair matted and sticking on end from the previous night. He had tossed and turned all night long, and laid half-awake, restless, sweaty, and a little bit panicked over what he saw on the way home. The sound of Goldie the golden retriever’s painful, pitiful death, and Mandy Mueller’s glossy-eyed, far-off stare haunted his dreams. He couldn’t shake the icy, stabbing pit that had formed in his stomach after the whole incident, and it felt like his insides were being gnawed away at with worry.

He really needed to talk to Dustin, but first—

“Get up!” He shouted from around his toothbrush, minty foam spewing from his mouth as he ripped the blankets off of Mandy’s form where she laid curled up on the couch, looking peaceful and only half as diabolical as she usually did. She didn’t move once the blanket was removed, half her ass sticking out from under her small skirt and her shirt riding up into her neck practically, but she did mumble incoherently, somehow managing to sound whiney even though she wasn’t even using the English language. Steve rolled his eyes, taking the toothbrush from his mouth, “Mandy! Get up!”

The girl in question simply moaned, curling in further on herself and tugging a couch cushion over her head.

Steve took the blanket he tore off her and beat her with it, making her grunt out a series of murmurs that Steve was nearly positive were curse words. 

“I’m serious, Mandy!” He announced, pausing only briefly before preceding to whack her with the throw blanket again to punctuate his own demands, “Get—the—hell—up!”

She looked back over her shoulder at him, eyes squinty with sleep and eyebrows pinched in the middle of her face, a ratted mess of gold-spun hair sticking up as she turned her head. Steve smacked her in the face with the blanket once more, but she gave no reaction, the only sign he even hit her at all being that her nest of frizzing hair flattened for one fleeting moment before puffing right back up.

“Steve,” She rasped out, bottom lip swollen and split in the middle, looking to him with her narrowed mascara-rimmed eyes, “I’m dead right now. I apologize for the inconvenience, but _please_ , make an appointment with my secretary for a more convenient waking time.”

Steve couldn’t believe some of the dumb shit she said, honestly. Mandy Mueller said shit like that with a straight face, and then—oh, yep! She just turned right back around and plopped her face into the couch. Right, Steve thought, this called for drastic measures. 

He marched right through the disgusting filth-littered house he once called his home to find his barely recognizable kitchen. 

He found an empty punch bowl on the floor and filled it up in the sink.

The splash against the side of Mueller’s cranium was hardly satisfying, given she merely spat the water out, sitting up like a vampire rising from its coffin. She turned her gaze on him, black mascara dripping down her face in inky streaks.

She looked too much like the anti-christ when she announced dully, “I’ve awoken.”

He tried not to shudder at her lifeless tone. She might have actually been the devil. Or at least possessed by a malevolent spirit like in Ghostbusters.

“Yeah, good,” He nodded, dropping the bowl and placing his hands on his hips, toothbrush still sticking out of the corner of his mouth, “Now get the hell up and clean yourself up, Mueller. You look like hell.”

“Ugh,” Mandy retorted quite eloquently, making a sound that sounded both like a groan and a scoff, “You’re one to talk, Limpdick. You look like you got in a fight with a wind turbine. And lost.”

“Mueller, you look like you escaped your own grave,” Steve replied evenly, his voice muffled around his toothbrush, “It’s a little disgusting. Do you smell as bad as you look right now? I don’t even wanna know, really.”

Mandy’s jaw hung for a moment in exasperated offense, “You look like a bird could nest in your hair, Tree-boy.”

“Mandy, you look majorly crusty,” Steve finally sighed, feigning more care than he actually had, “Go take a shower, for your own sake. You can’t just let yourself marinate in your own blood and sweat, it’s nasty.”

Mandy merely gave him a hurt look, pouting to herself, before she was rolling off the couch and groaning pitifully as she staggered to her feet, “Oh, my God. My legs. Ugh, I feel like I can barely move the lower half of my body. Fuck, this hurts.”

She wobbled on unsteady legs across the room, her knees bending disjointedly and her joints giving a little creak as she moved, grabbing at every surface she came across to try to keep herself upright. She fumbled to grab at the back of the couch, and then the bookcase, and then finally, she reached the far wall, slumping a single shoulder into it with a sigh as she slid along it toward the staircase. When she reached the first step of the staircase, looking pathetic and rickety, Steve had to intercede.

“You need help?” He asked, pulling his toothbrush from his mouth, and Mandy, in opposition to every careful and painfully slow movement she was making previous, whipped her head around quickly, the movement making her hair look a little bit like an explosion on her head.

“Fuck off, Steve,” She called across the room, and Steve raised his brows in her direction, “I got this!”

Mandy took the first step, grimacing in pain as she rose onto it, before promptly slamming her knees onto the second step as she flopped to the floor gracelessly, and Steve asked again, “You sure you don’t need help?

On her hands and knees, Mandy began crawling in a completely pathetic, dehumanizing, and also hysterical display that had Steve snorting as he watched her.

“Never,” She replied stubbornly, sounding out of breath as she finally managed to make it up half the staircase. 

Steve scratched at his head with his empty hand, watching her with humored bewilderment. Mandy was such a stubborn dumbass sometimes. She could have just accepted his help, but instead, she had to make everything awkward and uncomfortable as she crawled up the steps all for the sake of her own pride. Jesus, she was such a dork, Steve could barely understand how she had the school population under the assumption she was cool.

By the time she reached the top of the staircase, she didn’t even bother to get back to her feet, continuing to crawl along the floor like a helpless infant as she proclaimed in a flimsy, breathless voice, “I’m taking the master bath—“

“Alright,” Steve replied dryly, snorting as he watched her disappear from sight on her hands and knees, hair in complete disarray and clothing all askew on her body. She must have had the hangover to end all hangovers, Steve suspected, because he was sure if she were sobered up completely, she would have at least noticed the cold morning breeze on her exposed ass.

* * *

“—What the hell do you mean you didn’t see my car?!” Billy hissed into the telephone inside the small kitchen, glancing suspiciously over his shoulder in her direction, “It was there last night—what do you mean?! You think I don’t know where the fuck I parked my own car?!”

Max rose her brows from over her bowl of fruity pebbles, shoving a large spoonful into her mouth as she watched her stepbrother narrow his eyes at the wallpaper and begin pacing.

“Yeah, I don’t fucking know! I lost my keys, man! Shit was wild last night—“ Billy stopped mid-sentence, giving a beleaguered sigh as he rubbed his head, “Harrington’s, or one of those douchebags from last night got ‘em. But who the hell just steals someone’s car?! Only a crazy—No, I’m not going to fucking call you back! Hey! Shithead, don’t you fucking hang up on me! _God fucking damn it!!!_ ”

Billy slammed the phone back onto the receiver, following up by slamming it twice more, breathing heavily after he was done. He sighed, running his hands through his hair as he paced the length of the kitchen, before marching back to the phone and beginning to dial out again.

* * *

The real question wasn’t _if_ she would do it, but rather _how._

Mandy Mueller jangled the keys in her grasp, looking to the open driver’s door like it was the open maw of a hungry beast. Flat tires don’t get very far, she reminded as she bolstered her courage, and walking home the night previous had given her blisters blisters. So, she really didn’t even have a choice at this point. With a sigh, she shrugged herself out of her jacket, looking around for any onlookers, before setting it onto the seat before her.

Ugh, Mandy lamented inwardly, staring down at her jacket. Chuck Radner had managed to tear a huge hole in the back, and the dead center of the seat was still bare. Her luck just couldn’t stop sucking. Mandy folded the arm of her jacket over the gap, thinking that would have to be good enough, before carefully slipping in. It was a perfect fit almost, and it distressed her a little bit as she put her hands on the steering wheel experimentally. 

So, she thought as she adjusted the backrest, this was the inside of Billy Hargrove’s car. Gross. But also, Mandy’s eyes darted toward the glove compartment curiously. What an opportunity.

The glove compartment had shit-all of interest once she had popped it open. It was pretty barren except for some cigarettes, gum, and a meticulously organized stack of cassettes. So typical of Hargrove to be Type A. Mandy immediately tore through the music selection, coming across Van Halen, and Motley Crue, and The Scorpions, before finally finding her own mixtape at the bottom of the stack. 

Billy Hargrove was so fucking weird, and Mandy snorted at the thought as she read the note within the slipcover he had put it in. _For when she decides to be good,_ it read, _and not before that, Billy._ She really didn’t know what the hell Hargrove was getting at with that; Mandy was _always_ good, and she was sure of it. Shaking her head with bemusement clear on her face, she tore out the clattering plastic and shoved it into the stereo.

Prince’s When Doves Cry played, and Mandy looked around again, feeling like she could probably find some more secrets if she looked hard enough. Eventually, her eyes wandered to what was looming over her head. Ooh, she wondered what was in there. 

Petite hands fluttered then to the visor, and she flipped it open to find a pair of sunglasses and fucking condom of all things, so Mandy immediately gave a sneer and flipped it shut again. Alright, investigation closed; she was giving it up. Mandy gave a sigh, and leaned to adjust the length of her seat, only to feel some kind of flimsy, laminated paper, and she stuck her head between her legs to get a better look at what it was as she pulled out the magazine. 

A fucking nudie magazine was in her hands, and Mandy gave a screech, flinging it from her grasp onto the dashboard in her panic. Okay, that was the last straw! Investigation closed _indefinitely!!_ Mandy wanted to cry. Boys were totally the worst! What the _hell_ was Billy Hargrove doing with a skin mag in his car?! Mandy already knew boys did terrible, wretched, _godless_ things when they were all alone and bored, but in his car? _Really?!!_ Mandy hung her head. Why, God? She would be tormented forevermore.

Mandy adjusted the seat, before tentatively plucking the edge of the magazine and dragging it closer to her as she picked it up to set it back in its hiding place. As she had it poised before her, the centerfold dropped right before her face, and Mandy gave an audible gasp.

Mandy kind of wanted to be scandalized, but also, _damn._ Miss September was kind of hot. For a moment, Mandy was almost impressed by Billy’s selection as she took in the glamorous, tossled blonde hair, and tan, lengthy, sprawled out body. So, Mandy concluded, this was Billy Hargrove’s type. Interesting. She squinted and angled her head to get a better look, humming to herself as she mulled over the picture, before finally shrugging to herself and tossing the bundle of paper beneath the seat carelessly.

Still totally gross, Mandy’s final verdict echoed in her mind, before she cranked up the radio and shoved the keys in the ignition.

* * *

“Hi there! Are you lost—“

Mandy got out of the car, slamming shut the door and strolling up the driveway, “It’s just me, Mom.”

“Oh,” Her mother blinked, pointing to the car behind her, “Honey, what happened to your car?”

“It’s at Steve Harrington’s,” Mandy sighed as she marched up the from steps into the house, slipping past her mother in the doorway, “Somebody thought it would be funny to slash my tires, so I’m borrowing this from a friend.”

“Oh, I’ll tell your dad to sort it for you,” Her mother smiled at her, and Mandy began weaving her way through the sprawling house, her mother following after her, “Did you at least have fun last night, then?”

“Oh, yeah,” Mandy nodded dully, swinging through the kitchen and snatching a banana off the marble counter as she tossed the keys onto the kitchen table, before strolling right on through and beginning her trek upstairs towards her room. She peeled the fruit, taking a bite of it as she shrugged, “Everyone was super nice to me. People totally loved my outfit, Mom. Thanks for buying it for me, it totally stole the show.”

Her mother smiled at her from the first floor as Mandy hopped up the stairs, “You see? Your mother knows best, Mandy!”

Mandy laughed easily, before she was out of sight, giving a disembodied call of, “You sure do, Mom!”

Mandy slammed her door shut, plopping back onto her bed and stuffing her food in her mouth as she began the tedious process of ripping off her boots. She shucked them off and stripped out of the rest of her clothes with very little care. She finished her banana, tossing the peel onto her desktop as she moved towards her closet, rummaging through it until she could find something comfortable to wear. She settled on a blazer-jean ensemble that was more cute than comfortable, with the only upside being that the shoes she paired it with felt like heaven on her feet after a night of blisters and bloody toes. She tossed her hair up in a large bow with very little care, moving toward the bathroom to brush her teeth and coat herself in fragrance and cosmetics.

By the time she was finished, it was fifteen minutes later, and Mandy was thundering down the staircase with the banana peel in her hand. She went through the glossy kitchen, dumping her trash and snagging the keys from the tabletop, before disappearing from the house, leaving no sign she was ever there.

Mandy hopped back into the car, flipping open the visor and pulling a pair of sunglasses from it, slipping them on and starting up the car with a heavy rev of the engine. She reversed out of her driveway, tires screeching once she shifted the car into drive, and hauled it down the road, leaving two black lines in her wake.

* * *

“Yeah, hey, Tina, it’s Billy. Billy Hargrove,” Billy drawled over the line, leaning against the cabinets as he turned on his annoying cool-guy persona. Max rolled her eyes as his voice dropped in tenor, “Of course, I said I would. Oh, yeah? Why is that funny? I’m being serious here. Well, I already told you, you’re, like, drop-dead gorgeous. I’d be crazy not to—”

Max’s mom walked into the kitchen just as Max was finishing eating her cereal, and Max dropped her spoon into the bowl with a loud clang. Billy turned and gave her a dirty look that her mother either just decided to ignore or didn’t even notice at all.

“Mom, can I go to a friend’s today?” Max questioned in an obnoxiously loud voice, making Billy give her a frustrated look, before turning back to his conversation.

“—Yeah, my stepsister, y’know how kids are,” Billy muttered, eyeing her dangerously from the corner of his eyes, “Anyway—No, yeah, I’m at home. I’m calling you from—what?”

“Whose house, Honey?” Her mother asked as she moved around the kitchen, filling up the coffee maker and flipping it on, before looking through the cabinets. She eventually pulled her eyes from Max’s slouched form, glancing to Billy and asking helplessly, “Pans?”

Billy turned his attention away from his conversation with a bewildered expression, before giving a strained smile, “Lower cabinet by the sink, Susan.”

“Mike Wheeler’s,” Max replied, before gesturing to the preoccupied Billy, “Billy goes to school with his older sister. She’s really smart.”

“Oh, yeah?” Her mother questioned distractedly, pulling out a pan from the cabinet with a beam, before turning to Billy with a more reserved look, “Is that true, Billy?”

“Well, who the hell was in it?! No! It wasn’t me! Are you sure it was a California license plate?” Billy paused as he was hissing over the line, turning around and arching his brows in her direction with a poorly feigned smile, “Uh, yeah, she’s great. Nancy Wheeler is really, uh, nice, okay? Now, I’m a little busy, Susan, maybe later.”

Her mother rolled her eyes playfully, whispering loudly in Max’s direction, “Boys, right?”

Max gave a pinched smile in return, just as Billy’s father turned into the kitchen and sat beside her at the kitchen table. Her mother turned on the stove as Neil flipped open the paper, and Max got up from the table with a disconcerted look, taking her empty bowl to the sink and turning on the faucet. Her mother was moving around behind her, and her stepfather was speaking in low tones to her, but Max was a little more busy listening to Billy’s teenage melodrama involving a missing car, of all things.

How the hell did he manage to lose his whole car? It was a car. An actual car. It only went places when someone _drove_ it. Max wasn’t surprised, really, just kind of impressed by how stupid her stepbrother was.

“Tina, no—“ Billy’s voice took on a hushed, desperate tone, “No, Baby, I’m not mad at you—no, of course I believe you! I don’t think you’re crazy. It’s just the situation is kinda crazy, right? I mean, my car disappeared! It’s fucking missing, and all of a sudden, I’ve got you telling me that you just saw it drive passed this morning. That’s—no, I believe you. I’m not calling you a liar! Why the hell would I be talking to you right now if I thought you were a liar? I don’t think that—”

Max smirked to herself, covering up her laughter with a cough, before she was turning her face down and trying to make her way out of the kitchen as stealthily as possible, only to be stopped as her mother announced, “Max wants to go over to her friend’s house today.”

Neil rose his brows as he glanced in Max’s direction, “Oh, yeah? Whose house is it?”

He took a long sip from a coffee cup that Max had no idea he even got up to retrieve, she was so busy eavesdropping on Billy’s conversation. She rose her brows, trying to look as innocent as possible, “Mike Wheeler’s.”

Her stepfather gave a discontented hum, “A boy’s house.”

“Yeah,” Max cut in quickly, spewing as much information as possible in one split second, “And he’s got an older sister named Nancy Wheeler, who’s super smart. She’s a straight A student, and she’s really nice, and even Billy said so. She’s gonna be there, too, with some other kids from school. Everyone hangs out at Mike’s house. I just don’t want to be left out.”

“Is that true, Billy?” Neil asked gruffly. Billy looked over when he heard his name, brows raised.

Billy shrugged, phone still against his ear, “I don’t know who hangs out at Mike Wheeler’s house.”

“I meant about the kid’s sister, Wiseass,” Neil clarified with a tired, annoyed tone.

Billy pinched his lips together, face stony, before he shrugged, “I’ve never talked to her.”

“Hm,” His father hummed, before turning back to Max’s mom, “Well, what do you think, Susan?”

“I think it’s great that she’s making friends,” Her mother smiled, looking to everyone like a debutante before turning back to the food she was cooking, “What do you think you guys are gonna do?”

Max gave a look of surprise, before replying flippantly, “Probably just play some boardgames. The kids out here all play this thing called DnD, and we all get to paint our own game pieces and stuff.”

“Oh, like arts and crafts?” Her mother inquired, flipping something in the pan, and Max nodded, glancing to her stepfather.

“Yeah, it should be fun,” Max replied, looking back to her mother hopefully. 

“Sounds like it, Sweetheart,” Her mother answered, glancing to her with a smile, before glancing to Billy tentatively where he stood in the corner of the kitchen, hunched and whispering heatedly, “Uh, Billy, would you mind driving Max to her friend’s house today?”

Max held her breath to stop the insane laughter that just threatened to escape her at the look on Billy’s face. His eyes widened for a moment, before he was glancing to her mother with a hanging jaw, looking truly panicked.

_“Uuhhh—“_ He began, looking toward his father’s expectant expression, before he was replying, “No, I, uh… just hold on for a second, Susan, let me finish this call.”

Everyone in the kitchen paused, staring at him so harshly, Max swore she could see her stepbrother change colors from all the duress the entire house had him under. He jiggled his leg, bouncing on the ball of his foot, before he finally announced into the line, “Yeah, uh, I gotta go, family emergency. Someone’s probably dying, or something. Okay, Tina, bye.”

It was him, Max thought, he was the one probably dying.

“Who was that?” His father frowned as Billy placed the phone on the receiver, “Another girl?”

Billy’s expression was trained into an emotionless veneer, refusing to give anything away, but Max could see the distracted look in his eye that told her he was trying to come up with a lie, “Yeah. Tina— _uh,_ something. I forget her name. She’s nice.”

“Oh,” His father chuckled, “She’s nice, huh? I’m sure she is.”

Billy pinched his lips together, looking away pointedly as he made to escape, and his father continued, “Well, are you going to give your sister a ride to her friend’s house?”

Billy flinched at the word ‘sister’, and Max found herself frowning, eyes darting between the two with baited breath, before Billy was muttering uncomfortably, “I can’t.”

“Excuse me?” His father asked, his tone a low, dangerous thing, “I don’t think I heard you correctly, son.”

Billy looked anywhere but at his father, before finally blurting out, “I can’t, because I think my car—“

His father was out of his seat, slapping the newspaper onto the kitchen table, looking ready to say something, before the thundering sound of an engine was heard, interrupting the moment. Billy glanced toward the front of the house, eyes darting right over Max’s head before they turned back to eye his father warily. Max turned, meandering into the living room to peer out of the window in bewilderment.

Billy’s blue Camaro was pulled in front of the house, across the street, and the stereo blared with the distinct sound of Chaka Khan for a moment as the engine idled. Finally, the engine cut out, and the stereo shut off, encompassing the neighborhood in a strange silence that left only the distant barking of dogs.

The door swung open, a shiny penny loafer peeking out, before a tall blonde finally appeared from the car, looking too cool behind a pair of aviator sunglasses and sporting a white T-shirt and black blazer. Max gasped, pressing her hands against the glass, before a disbelieving laugh left her. Mandy Mueller shut the car door, sliding the key into the lock and turning it, before marching across the street, looking both ways as she crossed.

“What was that about your car?” Neil’s voice asked from behind her, breaking the quiet moment, before Billy was storming from the house, disheveled and shoeless towards Mueller.

“What the hell?!” Max heard Billy shout as he slammed the door shut, both teens meeting each other on the front lawn, and Max found herself smirking as she watched Mueller push the glasses on top of her head, revealing her coy look to the world. Billy snagged the sunglasses from her head, waving them in her face, and Mandy simpered, looking away and pinching her lips to withhold from a full blown smile, “These are _my_ glasses! And that’s _my car!! Just what the hell do you think you’re doing driving my car!?!”_

She shrugged, her voice too low to pick up, and Max just knew she was missing out on something great, because Billy’s face went through several different emotions—starting with vengeful and angry, and rounding somewhere near baffled for a moment, and then, bitter and begrudging. She held his car keys out before their eyes, dangling them, and Billy grabbed them midair, glaring heatedly. Finally, he turned and marched back towards the house, leaving Mueller on the lawn, arms spread wide.

He flung open the door, looking throughly disgruntled, and from behind him, Mandy’s mocking baby-voice called, “Aw, c’mon, Hargrove. Don’t be like that, I was just playing—“

The door slammed with a crack, and Billy gripped his keys and sunglasses in each hand respectively, clenching them so tight, one lens sprung from his glasses onto the floor.

Max rose her brows, moving wordlessly out of his way as Billy tore through the living room towards his bedroom.

“Who’s the girl? Your nice, new friend, Tina Something?” His father’s words stopped him dead in his tracks, and Billy’s head cocked, his back turned to the family, his shoulders rolling as he turned to face his dad with a tight-lipped expression.

Mandy was still visible through the window, laughing to herself on the front lawn, and looking around cluelessly at all the houses around. Neil jerked a thumb in her direction, and Billy sighed, glancing over.

“No, just some girl from the local high school,” Billy replied, expression wary as he eyed his father across the room.

“And she just showed up at our house, driving your car? This random girl from school?” Neil questioned, and Max rose her brows, intervening before she even knew what she was doing.

“That’s Mandy Mueller,” Max blurted out, “I know her. She stood up for my friends when they were getting picked on. She’s super cool. The coolest girl in high school, actually. And majorly nice.”

Billy looked to her suspiciously, saying nothing as he glanced back to his father, who was giving her a scrunched expression.

“Really?” Her stepfather questioned in a befuddled murmur, scrutinizing her for a long moment, before turning his expression on Billy, “And the _coolest girl_ from the _local high school_ just decided to drop off your car for you?”

“I, uh,” Billy was practically squirming, “I guess.”

“So, where’d you leave your car then?” Max’s eyes widened, her head swinging to give Billy a compelling look. _Please,_ it said, _just don’t fuck this up._

“Oh,” Billy began, trying to seem cool under pressure, “Just at this guy’s house from the basketball team, he’s cool. I got a ride home from him last night.”

Max rose her brows at the explanation. It didn’t make any fucking sense, but it wasn’t overly incriminating, she guessed. Anything would be better than the implication that Billy left his car at a girl’s house.

“Is that so?” His father hummed in thought, eyes narrowing, “And she’s still outside our house, because…?”

“Is there a reason you’re grilling me over some girl?” Billy retorted in a clipped tone, his temper getting the best of him, “I can’t help what everyone else does, Dad! She’s still outside, ‘cause she hasn’t moved her legs and walked off yet. Why the hell am I being interrogated over it?”

“Excuse me? Who do you think you’re talking to like that, boy?!” His father bellowed, and Max’s mom stepped in the middle of Neil’s warpath, murmuring softly in hopes to placate him before he really exploded, “The disrespect—!”

“Please,” Max’s mother begged raggedly, and Max’s brows furrowed as she looked on from her position near the front window, “Can we just have one day without fighting?”

“What’d we talk about before, Billy? Huh?” Neil’s angered voice echoed through the space, and Max found herself peering over her shoulder to see if Mandy Mueller was still there, inexplicably embarrassed and worried the older girl could hear her stepfather shouting from outside, “Did you forget already? Do we need to go over it again?”

Mandy Mueller’s head cocked outside the window, her eyes trained on a wall of the house, and Max found herself looking at the dead-eyed expression on her face, wondering if there really was something wrong with her mentally. She looked like a zombie for a long second, before she was jerking back into motion. Her ponytail bobbed as she snapped out of it, shaking her head out, before disappearing from the lawn, making her not so easily spotted from the window. 

Max pulled her attention from the shouting match happening in the room before her, slinking closer to the window to watch as Mueller began stomping off towards the street, only making so far as the edge of the driveway, before stopping. The older girl’s shoulders heaved for a moment as she kept her back to the house, and Max distantly heard the sound of something shattering from being thrown, before her mother was beside her.

“Maxine,” Her mother said in a hurried tone, “Uh, how about you go to your room for a little bit, Sweetie? Okay?”

Max frowned to herself as she stared at Mueller’s back, before she was turning around and looking to her mother’s worried face, muttering placatingly, “Sure, Mom.”

“—Dad, you’re being really fucking unfair! I have done _fucking everything_ you’ve asked of me, and—”

“And you got so wasted last night, you conveniently lost your fucking car?!”

“Obviously not! It’s parked in front of the house—!”

“Because some stuck-up whore from the _local fucking high school_ decided to—“

The doorbell chimed before her stepfather could finish his statement, and everyone in the room froze on spot. Max was the first to burst into action, sneaking right out of her mother’s reach and practically running to rip open the front door. 

The wood swung open with a slight creak, morning light spilling over Max’s eyes for a moment, before her vision cleared enough to reveal Mandy Mueller standing before her. She looked down at her with a glint in her eye and an easy smile that only pulled up one corner of her lips, before her eyes were darting over Max’s shoulder to where Neil stood. Her eyes shuttered just slightly as she stared at him, and Max knew she had heard the yelling.

“Hi,” Mandy greeted easily, her voice a mellow lull to Max’s ears after all the shouting that had just happened in the moments previous to her arrival. 

Max opened her mouth to find anything to say, before promptly shutting it again. It took her a while, but she finally squeaked, “Hi.”

Mandy’s eyes drifted languidly to her face, her expression that of vacant amusement, “I was wondering if I could use your phone. I need to call a friend to come pick me up.”

Max felt a hand on her shoulder, before looking up to see her mother’s smiling face, “Of course, it wouldn’t be a problem. Who are you, again?”

Mandy’s feathered brows arched with polite interest, “Mandy Mueller, from the local high school. And you?” 

At Mueller’s words, the collective breath of everyone in the room was held, and Max’s mom’s hand squeezed her shoulder briefly. Mandy glanced between her mom and Max, before they finally settled themselves on Max, her crooked smile turning up at both corners now. Max rose her brows at her, finally realizing that she was getting joy out of watching the entire family squirm in her presence. 

What a sicko, Max thought. Even though Max kind of wished she could make her dysfunctional family shut the hell up with a few well-worded phrases, too.

“Oh, hello. I’m Susan Hargrove,” Her mother greeted, before looking down to Max, “And this is my daughter Maxine.” 

“Oh, yeah,” Mandy smiled, “I know Max. Great kid. Hey, Kid.”

Max arched her brows questioningly, opening her mouth to speak, but her mother cut her off with an awkward, “Um, did you want to come in?”

Mandy looked to Susan with a slightly judgmental look, but her tone remained light and curious, “Do you have a telephone outside for me to use?”

“Oh, uh, no,” Max’s mother laughed, the sound only slightly strangled, “I guess not, come inside.”

Mandy smiled, stepping inside, before closing the door behind her, making Max’s mom linger in front of her awkwardly, before waving around the room dismissively.

“We’re still moving in,” Susan explained to the disordered state of the living room, “Sorry about the mess.”

Max stepped back from her mother and Mueller, eyeing the two of them as Mandy stood, watching her mother try to clean up the broken remnants of whatever pottery that was just broken. The older girl crossed her arms, eyes squinting just slightly as she watched on with poorly concealed  
disapproval.

In opposing corners of the room, Billy and Neil stood, looking like two boxers readying for another round in the ring as they eyed each other with simmering tension. The first to tear their gaze away was Billy, chest heaving and fists clenching as he turned his gaze onto Mueller where she lingered near the doorway, assessing Susan’s handiwork. As if she knew she was being watched, Mandy looked up to meet his eyes, meeting his heavy gaze without fear. 

“I have to call Harrington,” Mandy explained to Billy, and even with the irritated look he gave at the name, she continued on in her cool tone, “He’s gonna come pick me up.”

“Where’s he taking you?” Billy’s rasped question rang with a cold bitterness.

Mandy shrugged nonchalantly, “Probably home. Maybe I’ll make him buy me some food. I could go for something sweet, I think. You wanna come?”

The easiness of the conversation seemed to unsettle Billy, and he cleared his throat, brows furrowing in disconcertment, “I’m sorry? What was that?” 

Mandy looked away from him for a moment, looking to the adults in the room as they both glanced in her direction at Billy’s bewildered tone, before she was looking to him with a quiet chuckle, “Well, it might be nice to have someone around to stop me from fighting with Steve for a while. You wanna fight with him for me, Hargrove? I hear you’re pretty good at it.”

Billy glanced towards his father at her words, looking almost sheepish, before glancing back to Mueller and replying hesitantly, “Not as good as you, Queenie.”

Mandy full on beamed at him then, her grin a wicked, toothy thing as she nodded, “I think you may be right about that, Hargrove.”

The look she sent Max’s stepfather after her words was a loaded one. Her eyes were filled with challenge and warning in equal measure, and Max found her jaw going slack at the older girl. Mandy Mueller had crazy balls! She just stood there, lofty and cool, looking to Max’s stepfather like she was waiting for him to say something to her. Anticipating it, even. Wanting for nothing more than for him to address her, and for her to get to say something smart back.

He didn’t, though—he just stood stoically, eyeing her with clear dislike, before looking back to Billy with a warning glare. Mandy simply nodded, smiling impishly as she strutted through the living room like she owned the entire house, moving to the telephone without even having to be directed. 

“Alright,” She finished the conversation easily, shrugging as she picked up the phone and turned her back on the living room and all its inhabitants, “You tell me if you change your mind, Hargrove.”

Max almost felt like those words weren’t even for Billy, and she felt her skin prickle at the creepily deliberate nature of Mandy Mueller.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so I ended up dissecting this chap a lil b/c ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ idek it felt clunky to me??? w/e, anyway!! next chap has mandy being a mess and hopper showing back up much to his own dismay LMAO. so till next time, lovelies! luv u all! <3


	18. Children of the Beast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A prophecy is (accidentally) self-fulfilled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ugh, okay! so, i'm totally off my rhythm with posting, I know! I'm so sorry, guys! <3 I've just felt rotten lately and haven't been in the right mindset to write and edit. just know that ILY ALL and I wouldn't ever want to disappoint you so I made sure to push this chap out ASAP lol <3
> 
> anyway, this chap will cover some sensitive (also some kinda weird??? idek lol) topics, but if u made it this far into this story you'll prob be fine lol 
> 
> also, b/c i'm a dweeb who is obsessed w/ my own dumb references, i must tell you that this chapter title is a reference to the Motley Crue song "God Bless the Children of the Beast" b/c it is a SHMOOD™ for this chap lmao
> 
> and p.s. if there are any weird GLARING flaws w/ my grammar or coding or w/e, just know it is b/c I am, as always, a big fat idiot lol. they will either be FIXED or I will forget to go back and check them lmao. either way, pls forgive me. <3 
> 
> anyhoo, as per usual, i still luv yall!! <3

Mandy Mueller already knew.

Mandy Mueller lived her entire life always knowing too much. She had seen flashes behind his eyes—the screaming voices, and the crying, and the starburst of red on impact, and the dark, small places he used to hide in as a child—and she had caught glimpses of that special, blackened type of anger inside him that took years to nurture. Even before she read his mind, she knew it. She had seen it countless times before him, in countless others, and he wasn’t all that different, really.

She told herself to walk away, the same way she did with every other terrible thing she ever faced down, but Eleven and Mike Wheeler and that stupid, dead fucking dog had her thinking. 

The world was cruel. It carved people down and made them something that may have not been pretty, but something that could certainly survive. The human condition was to suffer and endure, and everything that didn’t endure—well, that was just natural selection. Everyone else would go on, stronger as a collective.

But Eleven had shown her a kindness Mandy hadn’t ever been exposed to before—both in her actions and through her memories. Mike Wheeler, brave and selfless, was still kind, despite everything being against him. He was lanky and goofy, and kind of easy to pick on. He was soft, really, and didn’t stand up for himself, but he was fucking brave. Insanely fucking brave. He faced down the entire world all for Eleven, and Mandy found herself thinking maybe more people should start facing down the entire, cruel world after that. Because, maybe, the world wouldn’t have to be cruel. Maybe the world could be something to thrive and flourish in, rather than something to survive and endure.

It was all solidified when she felt it. That deep, terrible, gutty tearing inside her the night previous—that dog was suffering. It wasn’t just dying—not in the natural way things died—that birth, and then life, and then death, and then decay, and then the fucking blooming of life again. No, it was suffering—flesh tearing, and bones being ripped loose from its ribcage, and liver being gnawed at. It was prey, being torn apart in flesh and spirit, and Mandy couldn’t bare the feeling. Whatever those alien, eyeless creatures were—they were clearly apex predators, hungry for any weakness, and that golden retriever was just a meal. There would be another meal the next day, and the day after, and again the day after that—and it would all be more, terrible, ugly suffering. And it would never fucking change; the cycle would just continue on, unless someone fucking did something to change it for once.

So Mandy did. 

She had planned to scare it off, stand up to a monster that previous to that moment had been the worst part of her nightmares, but she accidentally did something else. 

She had looked into that thing’s mouth, and got an idea. Its mind only functioned in the most basic of ways—it was primordial. Survival instinct, really. It was just a puppet having its strings pulled, and Mandy looked into its consciousness and saw that. So, she decided to tug them herself. 

Mandy had stuck her hand into Nancy Wheeler’s head and pulled out something inky and black that she couldn’t name, but that monster was _filled_ with those black, empty masses. There wasn’t just one, but hundreds of them—tiny little fissures that emitted pulses of electricity and wobbled around in a greyscale of nothingness. She wasn’t careful with them, digging in her fingers and tearing them out like they were dead weeds being pulled from ashen ground. They unwound from one another like the tape being pulled from a cassette, and she just continued to pull, watching as more and more unraveled, the small pulses of electricity slowly dying out. It was like she was yanking a television cable from a wall-socket, a spark of electricity discharging from the outlet with one last flash, before it fizzled out completely.

Over, and over, and over—all within the span of a second. She ripped them all out. Mandy left the mind of that beast with only flashing, disordered colors, and the horrible, ringing loss of something it didn’t know how to miss. All that remained of that monster’s head when she was done with it was painful, strange, warbling sounds, and a deep-seated terror of the power she held over it. She had made it suffer, and subjected it to her will, and now it knew a different god.

Distantly, she had heard a clap of thunder, the back of her mind flashing red with an anger she knew wasn’t hers. Well, Mandy laughed inside her head at The Storm, someone had to do it.

Billy Hargrove couldn’t be protected, and Mandy was never going to come to his rescue. He wasn’t Mike Wheeler, or Goldie, the golden retriever. He wasn’t soft, or kind, or brave. He was beyond saving, and she refused to try. He was too old, and too rotten, and too fucking mean to even accept help if she ever gave it—and Mandy Mueller wasn’t planning on reaching into his deep, black pit of a head and trying to rewire him, either. It would have been cruel, really, to force that upon him, and some things were even too cruel and selfish for Mandy’s taste. 

Mandy wasn’t planning on doing anything about the situation. Billy Hargrove was an awful, rotten boy, and she knew his rot started somewhere. She always knew, and she didn’t care. She was just going to walk away.

She really should have walked away. 

She _wished_ she had just walked away.

Maxine, an annoying red-headed child that was kind of rude but also pretty fun to mess with, was there, her mother telling her to go to her room while everyone else was cast into a flurry of violent chaos. And it wasn’t right. Little girls shouldn’t have to hide in their own home. The world was cruel, after all—especially to little girls, Mandy knew from experience—and the only safe place a child could ever have was their home. 

Well, Mandy sighed to herself, someone had to do it.

She marched back up the steps of the small home, pressing the doorbell with more force than necessary. She was cursing Eleven, and Mike Wheeler, and Goldie, the golden retriever. Soft, compelling babies, the whole lot of them, and Mandy resented the fact that the first act of kindness she would ever truly be gifting to someone would be going partially to Billy _fucking_ Hargrove of all people. Evil, terrible, rotten Billy Hargrove.

God, the world was so fucked up.

* * *

 

It made things different.

Mandy walked into the small home, looking around at the broken shards of pottery and the way Susan Hargrove rambled off pathetic excuses as she crouched along the floor, fumbling to clean up a mess that wasn’t even hers. 

The world stopped when she walked in, everyone’s minds going from cluttered, frenetic emotions to stagnating numbness. The riotous hurricanes of anger building in the males of the house were dwindling down to wariness at her presence. She was an outlier, and it made everyone nervous. Because she wasn’t supposed to know about their dysfunction, and their violence, and the way everyone _really_ fucking hated one another. That would be shameful, really, for a family to hate one another the way the Hargroves did, and Mandy Mueller couldn’t be allowed to know about any of it.

Mandy picked up on a clammy nervousness and a thundering heart, glancing up to lock her gaze on Billy Hargrove. It was the first time she ever picked up on this type of cold terror from him, and it was strangely unsettling. He was usually filled with fire, his blood running hot with excitement or frustration, and he always felt like he was in need of something to let off some steam. And now he wasn’t. He was subdued, and Mandy found herself thinking of the way he fought like an animal and laughed like a lunatic the night previous. It was such a contrast that she found herself almost saddened. _Almost_ —she smothered the rising emotion inside her before it could even dream to take flight.

“I have to call Harrington,” Mandy announced just to hear a sound that was real, still watching Hargrove’s thoughts in the back of his head, “He’s gonna come pick me up.

At the sound of her voice, she picked up on resentment from the opposite end of the room. Hargrove’s father looked at her with blatant disapproval. He didn’t like the way her voice sounded, uncaring and unopposed, or the way she looked, effortlessly beautiful and knowing it, or the way she stood with her shoulders back, tall and proud. He hated her, really—wished she didn’t exist altogether. He looked at her like she was an obstruction. And she was. That was her entire purpose for knocking on their door, and he knew that.

_Another piece of ass,_ his mind dismissed, _little whore will open her legs and he’ll get what he wants like usual, fucking brat._

Mandy found herself smiling without meaning to, an easy turn of her lips as she nodded to herself. She really couldn’t believe Billy Hargrove’s father just referred to him as a brat, and it almost made her forget he referred to her a piece of ass and a little whore. Almost.

“Where’s he taking you?”

Mandy rose her brows at the question, deciding to ruffle a few feathers as she answered, “Probably home. Maybe I’ll make him buy me some food. I could go for something sweet, I think. You wanna come?”

Billy Hargrove’s head spun from the offer. 

_A lifeline,_ Billy’s mind hissed, _Bitch is tossing me a fucking lifeline after I just yelled at her outside._ Billy looked at her like she was the sun, squinting at her for a moment, his jaw clenching, a tendon in his neck jumping. He was already so in love with her, and she was just digging him a deeper pit. 

“I’m sorry?” He spat out, brows furrowing as he looked between her and his father, unable to decide what he should be worrying about at the moment, “What was that?”

The look on his face paired with the thoughts swirling around in his head had her looking away. She didn’t want to see all his wants and wishes, and that dumb, surprised, almost hopeful look on his face. It was too gooey for her. He looked grateful, and befuddled, and she hated it. He wasn’t allowed to look at her like that after he kissed her the night previous in his dumb astral form. It made her feel flustered and stupid, and ugh! She just hated him so much. He couldn’t keep it together for one damn second!

She was feeling desperate and petty all of a sudden. She needed to get out of this house.

“Well, it might be nice to have someone around to stop me from fighting with Steve for a while. You wanna fight with him for me, Hargrove? I hear you’re pretty good at it.”

The words were meant to make him nervous, angry, antsy, sweat a little—anything, really, but the flood of endearment she picked up on. Hargrove’s dumb ass took it as a compliment. God, he was so dumb! And so in love with her at all the wrong times!

His mind flashed through a quick sequence of memories, and she stared at him through the brief moment.

A bunch of firsts—the first time he spotted her across the school parking lot, parking and slinking out of her car looking like a calendar model, and the first time he talked to her, tapping her shoulder and getting her to turn and look at him in class, diamond earrings a perfect match for the way her eyes caught in the sunlight. He thought she was one of the best looking girls in Hawkins, and he hated her at the time for being so fucking boring and unaffected.

In the beginning it was different, but then he caught her in other instances, shouting distantly and flipping people off. Falling from windows, and getting ensnared in bushes, and getting hit by cars, and then getting back up to her feet right after. He was around to see her make crude gestures and tell people to kiss her ass. Watched her as she made bratty faces and off colored jokes without flinching. Saw her pick fights and make absurd threats, giving the world cold eyes and a plethora of curse words. She went from flat and lifeless, to alive and vibrant before his very eyes.

Hawkins, Indiana was a desolate desert, and Mandy Mueller was his oasis in the middle of all the bleakness. He finally found something to save him from going fucking crazy with boredom, and it was her—pretty, mouthy, and always up to something. She was a reprieve from his own destructive thoughts. He could bicker with her endlessly, and watch her forever, falling from one disaster right into the next, and it suddenly didn’t feel so lonely all the time. The world didn’t seem so awful, because at least Mandy Mueller was around making things interesting. 

Even the night before wove through his mind, fresh and crystal clear. That cassette on his mind, the sight of her dancing, and then drinking, and laughing, and fighting. Tearing her down from the roof, her falling right into his lap in the middle of pure pandemonium, him running into her in that closet as he avoided the cops—and then hand-cuffs, and a long, dread-filled drive. And then she fucking freed him against all odds, because she was impossible—capable of anything and everything—and he wanted to kiss every fucking part of her. Tackle her to the ground and roll around with her and cover her with kisses, because she was so stupid and perfect and just fucking freed him like he was a puppy she was picking out at the pound. She always kept things interesting. It never fucking ended. Ever. She even managed to show up at his house with his missing car, making more trouble than he ever thought one girl could ever be capable of.

_You stupid, crazy bitch,_ his mind rang out with mirth, eyes trailing down the length of her guardedly, _God, you are so perfect. I think I love you, fuck._

“Not as good as you, Queenie,” He replied, and Mandy couldn’t stop the smile that wormed its away onto her face. All of the bullshit, and still, he thought he liked her. What a chump! God, Hargrove really was demented, and it brought a full grin to her face.

She found herself nodding, withholding from laughing as she rose her brows, “I think you may be right about that, Hargrove.”

His father observed their interaction with disapproval clouding his mind, and Mandy flicked her gaze in the man’s direction, eyes settling on the back of his skull without really meaning to. The name Queenie echoed in the starkness of his mind, and Mandy got flashes of violence and blood and gunshots, and then suddenly, out of seemingly nowhere— _You ever fucking touch my baby again, and I’ll fucking kill you, you son of a bitch._ Slurred words, and a short temper, and the disgustingly pathetic tears of his son. _Please, Daddy, I didn’t mean to_ —the sound of the belt whipped through the air, and then blonde hair, blue eyes, and the way she held that knife, pointing it right at him. There was promise in her eyes, she’d do it this time, he was almost positive. She didn’t have to threaten this time, didn’t try to drag Billy’s small form into the car from his hold, didn’t even slam any doors or throw anything—she just picked up the blade and held it out, face determined and fearless. She would definitely do it. She would do anything and everything for Billy. She just loved him too much, and it was ruining him. She was making him soft—making him weak.

Mandy was frozen on spot, smile still planted of her lips as her mind finally realized that woman was Hargrove’s mother. Oh, his dad really hated her. A lot. It was an ugly resentment inside him, and it would be there forever. She thought of the fleeting, _He’ll get what he wants like usual, fucking brat._ Like usual. Brat. 

Hargrove’s dad really hated women. Hated them so much he hated his own son for being loved by one. He hated his son for his own mother loving him. Hated his son for loving his own mother. Hated his son for loving women in any fucking way. Hated that he went on dates, and stared at himself in the mirror, and—

It was a lot to unload, maybe too much, and when she stared at him, trying to keep her own head and not slip too far into his, she realized that it was just _everything_. It was all of it. And it made her viciously angry, because she hated Billy Hargrove for the right reasons, thank you very much. He was rude, and disrespectful, and a total pig, and his stupid dad hated him for all the normal shit he was. Like being vain, and in his own head, and for liking his _mommy_. All the innocent shit.

Mandy usually didn’t feel so strongly. Really. She had met plenty men who hated women. Had met plenty men who hit their kids. Had met plenty men who hit their wives. But there was just something so distinctly infuriating about this whole situation. She couldn’t figure out the sudden rage, she just hated him so much so suddenly, and it was so consuming.

The mean look, and the stupid, cocky smirk, and then she saw blonde hair, and her anger evaporated. It was her she was looking at. Mandy blinked, and her own eyes blinked in her mind. She was seeing through Neil Hargrove’s eyes.

He really hated her. She already knew that, of course, but _God,_ he _really_ hated _her._ She incited a furious rage inside him, and it was almost repelling. The sight of her was a misery—her delicate face dauntless, and framed by soft, golden hair, and her spine straight, head elevated with confidence, her body distinctly feminine with a small waist and a sure gait. Her entire form screamed at him—bad memories, all of the other terrible, disrespectful women who came before her—and he just hated her. He didn’t know her, but he hated her. She was soft, and should have been weak and known her place, but she didn’t—she looked like she would raise all kinds of hell.

He was right.

She would. 

Mandy nodded to herself as she placed her hands on the dip of her waist as she looked at him, pinching her lips together as she stared at him, before swinging her head around and moving from the room. If that was the way it was, then she guessed that was the way it would be. She didn’t readily concern herself with helpless causes. 

“Alright,” She announced as she crossed through the kitchen threshold, “You tell me if you change your mind, Hargrove.”

She picked up the phone, placing it into the crook of her neck as she looked through the doorway to the room she left, before turning back to the phone to dial out. Her fingers fumbled over the buttons, and she ended up messing up Steve’s number twice as she tried to rip her mind free from all the other inhabitants of the home. She was so distracted, brows furrowed and eyes straining on the numbers as her hands shook, that she smelled it before she even saw it there in the corner of her vision.

She whipped her head around to gape, jaw hanging as she loosened her hold on the telephone where it was between her ear and her shoulder. It dropped, startling her with its loud clamor, and then she was moving back towards the whole Hargrove brood on the opposite side of the wall.

She tore into the room, only to walk right into the back of the man who hated her so vehemently. Hargrove’s dad spun around, glaring, looking ready to say something, but she beat him to it.

“Your kitchen is on fire!” She screamed, her voice sounding more amused than it ought to have, given she was more panicky than humored—but yeah, she was feeling a little hysterical. She didn’t cause this fire, did she? When would she have? Did she accidentally leave her body? Ugh, God, this was a mess! The older man furrowed his brows down at her in confusion, and before she could continue, the sound of a smoke alarm was going off, jerking the man’s gaze from her.

“Oh, my gosh! The eggs!” Susan Hargrove shouted, pushing passed Mandy and Hargrove’s dad, before rounding the corner out of sight. The man before her followed with a large, lumbering gait, and Mandy found herself looking into Billy Hargrove’s expectant face. His brows perked up as her eyes met his, and she heard his mind call to her.

_Jesus Christ, Queenie. You haven’t even been in the house for ten minutes._

* * *

 

“Blondie,” Jim Hopper’s tired voice drawled.

“Yeah,” Mandy nodded solemnly, hanging her head as she sat shamefully on the curb outside the Hargrove residence. A single firetruck was parked on the street, lights flashing with red pulses that illuminated the scene. Everyone in the neighborhood stood on their driveways, gasping and murmuring with concern as they all hypothesized as to what tragedy had just taken place. 

“It hasn’t even been a goddamn day!” Hopper announced, waving a hand pointedly toward her pitiful, slumped over form.

Throwing her arms out dramatically, Mandy whined out, “I know!”

“And I find you on the scene of another incident!” 

_“I know!”_ Mandy reiterated with great emphasis, “It’s not ideal! I can’t believe this is my life! I haven’t even had breakfast yet!”

Over the Chief’s shoulder, Billy Hargrove smirked wickedly a few yards away, head turned to watch her as his body faced towards his house and the scene of his parents speaking with the fire department about the correct way to put out a grease fire. Apparently, they didn’t know tossing water on it was exactly the wrong thing to do. Hargrove shouldn’t have missed that fire assembly—could’ve saved a lot of people a lot of trouble. The terrible boy in question crossed his arms, rocking on his heels as he watched her, and Mandy frowned. Ugh, he was such a douche.

“Him again?” Hopper muttered, glancing over his shoulder to see what she was scowling at, “He’s the guy from last night, right? Pretty eyes, mean eyebrows? He your boyfriend or something?”

Mandy scoffed crudely, head whipping around to shoot daggers in Hopper’s direction for even asking such an offensive question, “He wishes.”

Hopper chuckled at the look of pure repulsion on her visage at just the suggestion, “That why he’s making eyes at you over here?”

Mandy sighed, rolling her eyes as she placed her elbows atop her knees and leaned her chin into one of her palms, “Can we go back to you accusing me of being an arsonist? I’d be more comfortable with that.”

Hopper smirked at her tauntingly, “I don’t think you’re an arsonist.”

“Just that I’m cursed?” Mandy quipped out blandly, “A jinx? Afflicted by some evil, nefarious voodoo witchcraft? I see how you could get that impression. I’m with you.”

“Alright, so what happened?” Hopper sighed, “Just give me the story, and you can go on your way. This is only a technicality.”

Mandy pouted, shrugging cluelessly, “Nothing! I just walked into the house, said how do you do, and went to the kitchen for the phone, and bam! A bonfire, right before my very own eyes.”

Hopper rose his brows at her words, “Okay? So what were you doing at your not-boyfriend’s house?”

Mandy snarked out sarcastically, “I came here to sex him within an inch of his life.”

“Alright then,” Hopper replied with trained indifference as he began jotting something down on a notepad, and Mandy squawked as he smirked from under his hat, “That’s going on the record. Mandy… went to one… Hargrove residence… to sex—“

“Uh, hey now, Chief!” Mandy blustered, waving her hands around as she slipped into a wise-guy accent, “I was kidding! Just a joke! Ha! Kids being kids! Y’know me! We’re pals!”

“Are we now, Wiseass?” Hopper questioned, looking down at her with a teasing look, “Well, Pal, how about you tell me just what you were doing at this house? For real this time.”

Mandy sighed, wilting slightly as she mumbled, “I just came back to return his car, I might have borrowed it.”

“You borrowed his car?” Hopper echoed with blatant suspicion, a thumb jerking in Billy’s direction, “That guy who isn’t your boyfriend and is still making eyes at you?”

“I feel really weird about how fixated you are on my nonexistent relationship with him,” Mandy squinted up at Hopper, “It’s creepy. Like, he’s barely been here for a minute, first of all, why would I even want to date him? And if I was dating him, why would I try burning down his house? It sounds very counter-productive.”

“ _Did_ you _really_ try to burn down his house, Kid?” Hopper responded, brows raised, “Seriously?”

Mandy made a gross choking sound in her indignation, tossing her hands up, “No! _Ugh!_ That’s not what I’m saying! It’s just that—Well, ugh! We’re not dating! And this fire wasn’t my fault! I’m just an innocent, helpless creature with probably the worst timing ever! Or luck— _whatever!_ I was just trying to be nice by dropping his car off, and somehow his house was already in the process of being on fire when I got here!”

Hopper sighed, scratching at the scruff on his beard for a moment, before glancing back to the scene in front of Hargrove’s home. When he finally turned back toward Mandy, he muttered, “I believe you, Kid, so keep down your voice. I’m just messing with ya.”

Mandy crossed her arms huffily, puffing out her cheeks briefly, “Oh, bite me! I already feel shitty enough, okay? These past few days have been hell. Everywhere I go, tragedy strikes! I’m bad luck!”

Hopper full on laughed at her then, and Mandy looked up at him miserably as he folded up his little notepad and slapped it against his palm while looking around subtly. Hopper rose his brows over toward the scene for a moment, a small, tight-lipped smile on his face, before he turned his head to look down at her, slipping his notepad back into his pocket with a contemplative expression.

“El says hi,” He announced finally, and Mandy rose her brows, finding herself actually surprised by his words, “Says you need to keep out of trouble while she isn’t around.”

Her surprise fell from her face as she scowled flatly, “I know damn well she didn’t say that. She doesn’t have the vocabulary capacity for that type of bossy language.”

“I’m paraphrasing,” Hopper explained simply, waving an arm around lackadaisically, “Whatever. She’s still right, y’know.”

“Yeah,” Mandy sighed, pushing some of her stray flyaways from her face and behind her ears, “I know. The world’s been coming at me fast lately. I’m going through some real shit, Chief.”

He nodded down at her, “Keep your head down and get through it, Blondie. And if you need anything, give the station a ring, got it?”

“Alright,” Mandy agreed noncommittally, “I’ll do that.”

Except Mandy didn’t know how the hell to keep her head down. Whenever she did that, she drifted off into the big, wide universe to float through space. Or got hit by cars. Or whatever. The fact still stood, she always managed to get herself into trouble. It didn’t matter if she locked herself in a damn box with no fucking address, Trouble would merrily find her, knocking on her sad little box, before busting in and ripping her away from any sense of normalcy once again. Ugh, why was she like this? Mandy wanted to cry a little.

“Alright,” Hopper sighed, placing a hand on his belt, “I’m gonna let you go. I’m gotta go speak to the family, write up an incident report, and—“

Hopper drifted off, stopping himself short when he saw the dull expression on Mandy’s face, “And you don’t really care. Alright, anyway, take care of yourself, Blondie. No more trouble, got it?”

Mandy heaved herself up to her feet, looking to the chief with a bland visage, “Y’know, for someone who just met me, you seem to be so sure that I’m always causing trouble.”

“Are you arguing that you aren’t?” Hopper asked, brows raised as Mandy crossed her arms and cocked a hip as she stared him down, “‘Cause I’ve been around the block a few times, Blondie. I was young once, y’know?”

Mandy narrowed her eyes, “Are you implying something here?”

“Well,” Hopper began, mirroring her stance only vaguely, shifting his leg to one foot and crossing his arms as he leveled her with a humored look, giving slight pause as he stared at her, “I don’t really have to imply it, Kid. You’re showing me. Just look at you.”

He gestured to her defiant stance, and Mandy dropped her arms, taking a step back and stumbling just slightly on the curb before righting herself with a frown. She looked around, glancing over to watch as Hargrove blandly watched his parents gesticulating passionately towards one another, while his stepsister was frogmarching towards the car, stony faced. He caught her watching, arching a brow and hollering from across the street as he turned on spot.

“C’mon, Princess!” Hargrove shouted, catching Hopper’s attention and making the older man pivot slightly to watch him with a knowing look, “You look like you could use a ride!”

Mandy pursed her lips, glancing towards Hopper as she announced drolly, “Please remind El that boys really suck.”

Hopper smirked at her, “I’ll pass the message along.”

“C’mon, Queenie,” Hargrove goaded, voice low and tantalizing as he stopped before his car, turning from it to call to her, “I gotta seat with your name on it, Honey.”

“God, I hate him so much, I almost wish I really did try to burn down his house,” Mandy muttered as she stomped around Hopper, who simply chuckled at her petulant grousing, “I gotta go. It was a nice talk, Chief.”

“Sure was, Blondie,” Chief replied in good-humor as Mandy rolled her eyes, stalking to where Billy Hargrove stood, leaning against the side of his car.

Mandy crossed her arms once she neared him, keeping a safe distance as she cocked her head and wondered aloud, “Were you calling me? I thought I heard something about a seat and a ride.”

Hargrove shifted on his feet anxiously, licking his lips in a way that let Mandy know whatever bad mood he was in previous was mostly gone. Boo, Mandy thought, now he was going to take pleasure in tormenting her. Ugh.

“Oh, yeah,” He hummed, laughing slightly as he feigned remembering something, looking off in thought briefly, “I was. See, you go ahead and take a _seat_ on my face, and I give you the _ride_ of your life—“

“Ew, Billy!” Max screamed, pure repulsion on her face as her nose scrunched up and her brows knitted together in the middle of her face, “Oh, my god! I cannot believe you just said that!”

Billy spun around to laugh at Max as she continued to announce her blatant disgust, face puckered up and eyes narrowed at him. Mandy stood behind him, rolling her eyes.

“You’re hilarious,” Mandy called drolly, walking around him to the side of the car Max stood on, declaring as she rounded the headlights, “I call shotgun. You get the back, Orphan Annie.”

“It’s repuls—“ Max cut herself short as she looked to Mandy with bewilderment, “Shotgun? I get the—? Wait, did you just call me _’Orphan Annie’_?”

Mandy stopped before the passenger side door, patting Max on the top of her ginger head very condescendingly, “Yep, you sure look like her to me—all sad and redheaded.”

“I have a name!” Max announced indignantly, chin tilted up proudly in Mandy’s direction, and Mandy leaned forward to level her face with younger girl. 

Mandy’s voice came out in a theatric whisper, “It’s not a very good name, though, _Maxine._ ”

“It’s just Max,” Maxine retorted bitterly.

Mandy pretended to pick a booger from her nose and flick it in Max’s face, “Huh, I really don’t care what kinda dumb dog name you got, Kid. You’re riding bitch if I’m getting in the car.”

Max gaped indignantly, and Mandy swung open the door, gesturing with a wave for her to get in the back. She just stood there, until, from over the hood of the car, Billy called.

“Looks like you’re in the back, Maxine,” He drawled, tone conveying poorly feigned sympathy. Mandy snorted, wiggling her eyebrows down in Max’s direction.

“Go on then, Maxie,” She cooed, using a saccharine baby-voice, and Max groaned, before clambering into the back. Mandy righted herself, and glanced in Hargrove’s direction to spy him leaning against the top of his car and ogling her. She rose her brows just slightly when she spotted him, before calling over the hood of his car, “Have I ever told you how much I hate kids?”

* * *

 

“So it was _your_ fault!” Steve accused as Toto’s “Hold On” played lowly on the radio, and Dustin held his hands up in mock surrender from the passenger seat.

“No! It was no one’s fault, Steve!” Dustin insisted, “It literally just up and walked off! And we tried to find you last night to go look for it out in the woods, but you were in the middle of a boxing match!”

“I was having a party!” Steve explained heatedly, “The fight started because you showed up with your little redheaded girlfriend and managed to piss off that douchebag Hargrove again!”

Dustin sagged in his seat pitifully, “Max isn’t my girlfriend. She doesn’t even like me. She kissed Lucas at the dance, and—“

“What?” Steve whined, feeling almost a little disappointed as he heard the news, “Seriously? You looked so good, too. Shit, that sucks, man. I know you really liked her.”

“Yeah, but whatever,” Dustin sighed, “It’s not a big deal, I guess. It just really sucks. Like, _a lot._ ”

“Well,” Steve began, shrugging as he tried to remain optimistic, “Good news is that there’s plenty of girls in Hawkins, so maybe you’ll meet someone else you like, right? Besides, if she did like you back, you’d constantly have to deal with her asshole of an older brother. You kinda dodged a bullet on that one.”

“Stepbrother,” Dustin corrected with a snort of amusement, glancing over to Steve with single confusedly quirked brow, “And yeah, I can see that. Your face looks like Grimace right now.”

Steve’s face scrunched up, “Grimace?”

“Y’know, from McDonald’s—?” Dustin elucidated slowly, and Steve rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, Dipshit, I know what you’re talking about! I was being offended,” Steve explained heatedly, before he was sighing exasperatedly, “I cannot believe this right now. All of this… _again._ Monsters roaming around and Billy Hargrove kicking my ass. It’s barely been a month. I cannot get a break for the life of me. So much for worrying over my college essay, I probably won’t be _alive_ next fall anyway.”

“Hey, hey,” Dustin waved his hands around placatingly as Steve rested his wrist atop the steering wheel and hunched forward miserably, “Listen, it’s probably not even that bad yet. We’ve got Eleven on our side, and there’s only _**one**_ demo-dog loose this time.”

“That we know of,” Steve added on, shooting Dustin a pointed look, “I seem to remember us both thinking there was only one of those things last time, too.”

Dustin made a constipated expression, lip curing up, “Yeah, that is true…”

Steve sighed, looking out onto the empty road as the car sped through the quiet forest around them. He couldn’t help the way his mind fixated on the idea that that demo-dog was just somewhere beyond the treeline watching them. 

“But,” Dustin continued, drawing Steve away from his paranoid reverie, “This time the gate’s closed. And we have Eleven. Mike says she can find anything with just her mind. We’ll get this thing, kill it, and be done with it for good this time. I’m sure of it.”

Steve sighed, “Yeah, I hope so, man.”

* * *

 

Nancy Wheeler had a mind like the early morning. It glowed in a gradient of golden light and navy blue, star-spangled skies. It was idealistic and full of potential. She had the moon and the sun, and her mind was always just on the precipice of being something more. It was usually a peaceful, beautiful thing.

_Usually,_ Mandy thought bitterly, standing on the stoop of the Wheeler residence with an upturned gaze as Nancy’s mind stewed on the second floor. The petite girl was wearing away at the carpet in her room, pacing a long line from one wall to another as she talked on the phone with one of her friends.

_“Aly, I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to date anyone, okay?—No, no, I’m not! No, ugh, I don’t know, okay?!—No, I’m not mad it’s just—“_

Max pressed the doorbell, letting it chime the once, before falling back a step, bouncing impatiently on her feet, hands clenching at the straps of her backpack. Mandy didn’t know what she was so impatient about, honestly, it wasn’t like she was the one that had been trapped inside the car with a tyrannical teenage boy who wanted to grope her and wouldn’t even let her change the radio station.

Mandy had spent the majority of the drive plastered the the car door and kicking just slightly every time Hargrove so much as twitched a single finger within her line of sight. He found it hysterical. She felt like she was ready to do some serious kung-fu shit at this point. 

Hargrove huffed from beside her, before pushing passed Max while muttering, “I swear to God, this fucking house—every time.”

He pressed the doorbell, holding it down as it rang over and over, his agitation growing every time he heard the full, jangly chime. Eventually, when his irritation became too much, he shifted restlessly on his feet and began pressing it repeatedly. The doorbell made an incessant sequence of stunted half-jingles at Hargrove’s whim, and screaming started to sound from within the home.

_“Mooom!”_

“Ted, can you get the door!?”

“Nancy, get the door for your mother!”

“I’m on the phone! Make Mike get it!”

“Dad! I’m busy!”

“Karen!”

“Ted!”

“Mom, I’m on the phone, please!”

When the door finally swung open, a new voice exclaimed with blatant condemnation, “You!”

And Mandy rose her brows with plain confusion, head peeking around Billy Hargrove as she squeaked out, “Steve?!”

“Oh, my god! Mandy Mueller’s here!” A voice whispered from somewhere nearby, and Mandy found herself squinting stupidly and whipping her head around to try and spot the owner of the voice.

_What the fuck is going on?_ Mandy wondered helplessly, only belatedly realizing it was, in fact, Billy Hargrove’s cluelessness she was sucked into momentarily. When she glanced in his direction, he was frowning at the side of Steve Harrington’s face as Steve stared at her with raised brows.

“What are you doing here, Mueller?!” Steve exclaimed, his tone cutting and accusing, and Mandy was not going to have that.

“Oh, hell no, Steve!” Mandy shouted back belligerently, stabbing a single index finger viciously in his direction, “You said that you were going to stay at your house and call contractors! What the hell are _you_ doing _here_? Huh, Buddy? Why don’t you explain that?!”

“I-I’m—“ Steve stammered, gesticulating wildly with a wave of his arms, “I’m—uh, well—”

“Babysitting!” Someone out of sight shouted, and Mandy grabbed at Max before her in fright, making the younger girl shake her off and shoot an irritated expression over her shoulder. She was probably still a little mad about Mandy accusing her of having a dumb dog name. Well, then. Mandy thought she would have gotten over that a little sooner, honestly. Talk about having thin skin. 

“Babysitting,” Steve finished with practiced ease, as if the answer hadn’t been shouted at him by the disembodied, prepubescent voice of God somewhere overhead.

“You’re a babysitter, Harrington?” Hargrove’s gruff voice interrupted Mandy’s thoughts, and she found herself looking to the boy in question, a single brow quirking up, before her head was swiveling around to Steve in anticipation for his reply.

“Yeah, sometimes,” Steve explained, placing a flippant hand on his hip as he shrugged cooly.

Mandy narrowed her eyes in his direction, waving a single arm around in her frustration, “Okay, but when I said I was gonna need a ride, how the hell would I get in touch with you? You said you’d be home!”

“You were gone for two hours before I came here!” Steve shouted back, waving his arms in a similar manner to her, “Was I supposed to throw away my whole day waiting for you?!”

Mandy gasped in dignified horror, “Yes, obviously, Steve!” 

“You’ve been driving my car around town for the passed two hours?” Billy questioned slowly from beside her, head turned in her direction as he gave her a reproachful look.

Mandy rose her brows in hopes of appearing less criminal, glancing over to him and announcing in her own defense, “I filled the tank with gas.”

Billy blinked at her for a brief moment, before his brows were furrowing in her direction as he opened his mouth to reply, only to be cut off by Steve yelling stupidly.

“You’re being so selfish, Mandy!” Steve declared petulantly, placing his hands on both hips now, and Mandy found herself doing the same, trying to puff up her chest for some completely inane reason that she had no complete understanding of. Steve shifted on his feet, looking down at her suddenly aggressive stance warily, before he was exclaiming, “I waited two hours! _Two!_ ”

“And I could have been stranded at—Ugh!” Mandy growled, tossing her head back and stomping a single, bratty foot at the whole fucking situation, “You’re infuriating! I’m a girl _all the time_ , except for when you’re supposed to wait on me! Like, God, Steve, I could have been _stranded!_ ”

“Oh, sure, at _Billy Hargrove’s_ house,” Steve waved off her frustrated grousing with a dismissive, flapping hand, putting an especially irritating amount of frilly emphasis on Hargrove’s name, “How horrible. You poor thing, Mandy. Any other girl would—”

“Finish that fucking sentence, Harrington!” Mandy screeched, jabbing a finger into his clavicle as she stepped into the doorway beside him, facing him down with a murderous look as she elbowed Hargrove out of her way, “I swear to God, do it! And watch what happens!”

“Jesus, Mandy!” Harrington huffed, rearing back, “Relax already! You have serious anger problems!”

“Oh, I do?!” Mandy exploded passionately, “Why? Because my friend lied to me? Or that said friend basically decided, ‘ _’Fuck, Mandy! I’ll leave her to the mercy of strangers!’_ Which one do you think should piss me off more?”

“Ugh?!” Steve grunted out questioningly, furrowing his brows as he gaped in blatant offense and confusion, “Billy Hargrove is hardly a stranger to you, Mandy! Quit being dramatic!”

Mandy found herself pursing her lips to withhold from losing her shit. Why were boys so stupid? All the time?!! Steve was a total dipshit. A complete _fucking_ dipshit. Like, he just couldn’t seem to comprehend that leaving Mandy to the mercy of Billy Hargrove was horrifically cruel. Hargrove was a manipulative, power-hungry monster, and any small thing he could lord over her, he would. So Steve abandoning her for Nancy Wheeler’s house kind of pissed her off, especially because if Hargrove had been a prick and Steve wouldn’t have picked up her call, Mandy would have been left walking home for the second time in a twenty-four hour period, and she had serious blisters already. It would have sucked majorly! Steve was lucky that Mandy didn’t throttle the life out of him.

“I’m not being dramatic!” She cried out instead of cursing belligerently like she really wanted to, “If Hargrove hadn’t given me a ride, I would have been stranded, Steve!”

“Oh, please! You got legs, Mandy! You could’ve walked!” Steve yelled willfully, seeming determined not to be a guilty party. Mandy hadn’t ever been so wholly offended in her entire life. Righteous anger gripped her insides and twisted them into one big knot of fury as she heard Steve’s words. Steve Harrington was so infuriatingly dumb, and Mandy needed to scream about it, honestly.

“And I got feet, too, Shithead!” Mandy screamed, all the anger that was building up in her finally bursting forth as she jerked her face into Harrington’s space, “You want me to kick your ass?!”

“What is all this yelling about?” A feminine voice cut off whatever reply Steve was planning to give, and Mandy was so busy glaring into his face that she barely even noticed a woman sliding into the doorway with a child on her hip, greeting sunnily, “Oh, Billy! Hi!”

“Hi, Mrs. Wheeler, you look lovely today,” The polite tone had Steve glancing over Mandy’s shoulder, eyes bulging comically as he looked over to Hargrove. Mandy found herself giving a trembling sigh as she tried to reign in her frustration, pinching her eyes shut for a moment as she took a long, almost painful inhale. She released it quietly and opened her eyes, leaning back from Steve and giving him a completely unnecessary shove that had him stumbling back into the house pathetically and shooting her an indignant, gaping expression.

Mandy missed a part of the conversation, too busy staring with malignant amusement as Steve struggled to right himself, patting himself off with feigned composure before giving her a miserable look. She cocked a hip and placed a hand on the dip of her waist, feeling a bubbling kind of mirth building up inside her as she matched Steve’s heated glare with a crooked smirk. What a sad little twig-boy. 

“Mandy Mueller?” Her voice brought her out of her staring competition, and Mandy looked over with tepid interest.

“Yeah, what?” Mandy asked dully, a single brow arcing as she glanced over to the three other people on the stoop. 

Mrs. Wheeler looked over to her, eyebrows elevated as she took her in, and Mandy belatedly realized that she hadn’t actually been spoken to, she was actually being talked about.

Nancy’s mom’s eyes traveled down the length of her body, and she heard the distant voice of her thoughts ringing out, _Ooh, that’s a cute outfit. I wonder what brand that jacket is._

“Hello,” Mrs. Wheeler’s mystified voice sounded as she blatantly ogled Mandy’s form.

“Yeah, hey,” Mandy replied plainly, straightening her posture and adjusting the lapels of her jacket with a flourish as she cleared her throat, snapping Mrs. Wheeler from whatever strange obsessive episode the older woman had just momentarily fallen into.

“And hello, Max! Mike’s already setting up downstairs if you wanna go ahead inside,” The older woman smiled down at Maxine’s form, before looking to Billy and Mandy respectively, “Would you like to come inside?”

Mandy did not miss the way Mommy Wheeler’s eyes settled on Hargrove, enamored and also intrigued in equal measure. 

Ugh, so gross. Mandy’s face scrunched up in distaste, and Hargrove’s face practically opened and revealed the fucking sun, his expression was so bright. Mandy squinted at him in confusion, trying to hone in on what was going on in that rotten head of his. She got too many other stimulus from him, though, and she couldn’t catch his gaze long enough to get a coherent thought from him other than the quiet, almost mumbled, _I’ve got it now._

Oh, no. What the fuck was he plotting? Mandy wanted to cry. She was never going to get home at this rate.

“Sure, Mrs. Wheeler,” Billy beamed, his voice deepening, and Mandy looked between Hargrove and Nancy’s mom helplessly, brows raised and eyes-wide, “That’d be great. C’mon, Mandy—“

Mandy’s head whipped around at the way he said her first name, brows furrowing low on her face as she frowned in confusion. Hargrove gave her a pointed look as he passed her to follow after Mrs. Wheeler, before he was snagging her arm and dragging her inside the house alongside him. Mandy followed stupidly as the front door slammed behind the two of them.

Ugh, she was never going to make it home.

* * *

 

“So we got arrested last night, and had to walk home—“

Max interrupted mindlessly, “Oh, so that’s why Billy got home so late.”

Steve gave pause, startling just slightly as he looked over to her from his position hunched at the end of the DnD table, staring heatedly between Dustin and Mike. He shook off his bewilderment and shrugged, “Well, yeah, probably, but—“

“So where did you see it?” Mike asked, interceding rather rudely over Steve’s story.

“Around forty minutes out from the police station,” Steve replied, “In the dark. In the middle of the woods. Eating someone’s dog.”

“Hm, “ Dustin hummed contemplatively, leaning an arm onto the tabletop and settling his head against his open palm, “Which direction?” 

“What the hell do you mean?” Steve leaned forward, hissing as he gesticulated wildly, “I don’t know which direction it went—“

“No,” Mike groaned, tossing his head back dramatically, “Not which way _it_ went, Idiot! Which way were you walking—“

“Wait, wait, wait,” Max waved her hands around when she felt they were getting too far away from the topic they really should have been discussing, “Did you say it was eating someone’s _dog?!”_

“Guys?” A tentative voice broke through their chaotic rambling, and all four of them looked up to spy Will Byers on the staircase to the basement, eyes wide as he trotted down the last few steps into the room, “How’d the mission go?”

“Bad,” Dustin replied succinctly, “Really bad. Harrington ended up having a party, getting in a fight with Max’s evil stepbrother, who definitely shouldn’t have even been there in the first place, and an entire riot broke out. Steve even got arrested.”

Will’s mouth opened once, before promptly closing again as he approached the table and dropped his bag onto the floor beside his seat. He seemed to be out of words, and Mike quickly inputted.

“And Steve, Billy, and Mandy Mueller encountered the demo-dog on the way home from the police station,” Mike finished, and Dustin nodded along forlornly.

“Is everyone okay?” Will asked, looking to Steve for answers, only for Steve to sigh, “I thought I saw those two upstairs, but—“

“I mean, I guess,” Steve replied with a helpless shrug, while Max’s eyes narrowed across the table.

“You saw Billy upstairs…? _Still?”_ Max questioned, brows furrowing in confusion as she leaned forward onto her elbows, “What the hell is he still doing here?”

Will simply shrugged in reply, and Mike sighed loudly, “Who cares if he’s still here? We have bigger fish to fry here!”

Dustin rubbed his nose briefly before muttering in Mike’s direction, “Why don’t we call the heavy hitter, huh?”

Mike grimaced, “Heavy hitter? What the hell are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about,” Dustin shot him a very pointed look that involved a high set of brows and knowing eyes, “Our heavy hitter? The big player? Kind of—“

“Our mage,” Will finished for Dustin’s long-winded and completely obnoxious rambling, “She’d know what to do, right?”

“Oh!” Steve suddenly exclaimed as he caught on, “Right. Our star player! Time to take ‘er off the bench, Coach! She’s ready for the game, and we need her.”

Mike gave a long-suffering groan, slapping an open palm onto his forehead as he sighed miserably to himself, “Please, no more sports analogies, Harrington—“

“I don’t know,” Dustin replied on Steve’s behalf, “I kinda felt like this one made sense. Felt really organic. Good job, Steve.”

“I can’t believe my sister dated such a clueless jock,” Mike muttered to himself as Steve and Dustin continued on with their conversation.

“Thanks, man.”

“Hey, no problem. I’m a firm believer in positive reinforcement, and honestly, it wasn’t that bad this time, so—“

“Okay!” Mike exclaimed over their inane conversation, drawing everyone’s attention around the table, “So, we call her, and then what? Just wander out into the woods? I don’t think she can just be wandering around—”

Steve nodded his head, running a hand through his hair, “Right, well, we can always try drawing it out with food and then, well, y’know…”

His statement did not go unfinished as Max finished plainly, “Club it to death so it can’t spawn any more demon monster babies.”

Steve shot her a bewildered look, brows jumping on his face, “Uh—“

“Well, _technically,_ ” Dustin began tentatively, shrugging slightly as he pondered something, gaze distant, “It did work last time, so…”

“I thought you guys said it was a horrible idea that almost got you killed, though?” Will inputted with a curious look, “Maybe that’s not such a good idea. Me and Jonathan can go visit her, we’ve been there before, y’know?”

“Okay,” Mike nodded, blinking, “Can I come with?”

Dustin shot him a narrow-eyed look from across the table, “Uh, I don’t think so. You’ll just go there and spend all day being all gaga over each other. No way, I’m vetoing that. This is a serious mission, Mike!”

“You can’t just veto my suggestion, Dustin!” Mike shot right back as he scoffed, “That’s not how it works! Plus, the whole party isn’t even here, so—“

“Ugh,” Max leaned her head into her palm, groaning miserably as the two boys argued across the tabletop. Will glanced in her direction and watched as she rolled her eyes, “I swear, these rules are so annoying. Who even cares? So stupid.”

He gave her a small amused smile, glancing back towards his two friends who continued to shout at one another belligerently, before Steve Harrington was standing from the seat and waving his long arms between the two.

“Alright, alright,” Steve called attention to himself, settling his hands on his hips as the entire party quieted, “Enough yelling. We’ll do both. We’ll set some traps today, and then Byers and Wheeler can make the trip sometime this week, how about that?”

Everyone looked around the table, before begrudgingly nodding their heads.

“Okay, but when the hell is Lucas gonna get here? That loser is late.”

* * *

 

Apple juice and cookies. They were jam cookies, and still somehow managed to be dry. Mandy crunched on them miserably, drowning down their dry texture with a long sip of apple juice. The straw made a pitiful gurgling as she ran out, before the entire carton collapsed in on itself. 

Mandy gave a sigh, glancing to her tablemate that sat to the left of her.

“So,” She began, leaning back in her seat as she caught the younger girl’s attention, “Are you in hell right now, too?”

“Hell?” The little girl echoed cluelessly, before she gasped softly and asked, “Is that where you go?”

“Go? What are you talking about?” Mandy narrowed her eyes in the little girl’s direction briefly, before her attention was drawn by the front door slamming.

“Hi, Mrs. Wheeler—!” The jovial exclamation was cut short when the boy spotted her sitting at the dinner table.

“Oh, hello, Lucas,” Mrs. Wheeler replied, seeming not to notice the wide-eyed stare the kid was settling on Mandy. Mandy rose her brows in his direction, catching flashing images of herself shattering a picture frame across someone’s face, and lifting her fist up threateningly, as a conversation echoed.

_“She’s undeniably beautiful.”_

_“Yeah, and she’s crazy. Honestly, what the hell is wrong with you, man?”_

Mandy smirked at him, before her attention snapped in Hargrove’s direction. His mind was stewing a nasty little concoction up inside him. Agitation, anger, revenge, and maybe just a little bit of wounded pride. How truly dangerous. A storm was building up, nurtured by his anger and the rush of his blood pounding in his ears. Mandy got a distorted memory from him, flashing red and loud sounds, and Lucas Sinclair kneeing Billy Hargrove in the balls. If she weren’t currently sifting through Billy Hargrove’s red-hot anger, Mandy might have laughed. It was, objectively, kind of hilarious. 

“Uh-oh,” The little girl beside her announced, holding up her broken red crayon, before promptly crying. It drew everyone’s attention, and Mandy leaned back in her seat, crossing her legs with a long, steady exhale.

Damn, and for one fleeting second, it kind of looked like a fight was going to break out. Billy Hargrove almost totally lost his shit in front of Mrs. Wheeler, and it would have been so yummy if he had. Mandy would have been able to watch as Mrs. Wheeler’s adoration and attraction fell into fear and bewilderment. He really was about to out himself as a total psycho. Damn it. 

Mandy snagged the crayon from the little girl’s hands, asking flatly, “What are you crying about, huh?”

She held it aloft, waving the broken pieces in the little girl’s face, before beginning to peel the paper off both sides. When she was done, she showcased them for the little girl, who had stopped wailing to watch her with watery-eyed curiosity. It didn’t even occur to her that everyone else was watching as well.

“It broke,” The little baby explained, and Mandy gave a heavy sigh.

“Look,” Mandy demanded, holding up both pieces in each hand respectively, before leaning over her and coloring onto the paper the little girl was using, “Now you got two crayons, get it?”

Holly Wheeler simply blinked, before gasping in awe, “Magic.”

Mandy rolled her eyes, “Yes, magic. But do not go around breaking everything. It only works with crayons.”

“Oh,” The little person breathed, looking blatantly amazed, and Mandy couldn’t help the tired look she shot to the far wall, “Okay, thank you!”

God, kids were so dumb. Mandy was in the middle of lamenting the truly stupid nature of children when a hand landed on her shoulder, making her startle.

“Go ahead downstairs, Lucas, everyone’s there,” Mrs. Wheeler called from over her head, and the boy she addressed took off while she was leaning down from over Mandy’s shoulder and patting her back, “Thanks for that, Sweetie.”

Mandy craned her neck around, brows raised, “Huh?”

Nancy’s mother loomed above her, smiling serenely, and Mandy couldn’t help the weird amount of discomfort she felt at the contact between them. Mrs. Wheeler was nice and flowery, she enjoyed talking on the phone for hours on end and reading fantasy novels. She was friendly and personable, and… totally fucking drooling over Billy Hargrove. Mandy didn’t get it. How did he do it? He was a total scumbag. He dressed like one, and talked and walked like one. What was there to romanticize? He wasn’t even rich! Mandy found herself blinking back the hazy imagery of Billy Hargrove casted in golden light and murky shadows, all dreamy and mysterious.

Ugh, Mandy got a headache very suddenly. Fuck.

“Look, Mommy!” Holly Wheeler exclaimed from beside Mandy, making her attention snap right back like a rubberband. Her brain felt raw after that, for some reason, and her eyes burned just slightly. Then the little girl beamed from beside her, shouting, “I have two crayons now!”

Mrs. Wheeler played along, gasping theatrically as she stood to her full height, “Wow, how’d you do that?!”

“Fairy showed me,” Mandy gave pause at the little girl’s words, before she was leaning over and asking.

“Who?”

“You, Silly!” The little girl giggled, and Mandy pouted, “Magic fairy!”

“Mandy,” She reiterated, pointing to herself, “I’m Mandy.”

“Magic Mandy,” The little girl snorted in amusement, and Mandy gasped, almost indignantly as the child leaned back over her paper to begin scribbling once more while whispering to herself, _“The mad fairy.”_

Mandy looked back to Mrs. Wheeler with bewilderment, only to find the woman giving her a one-armed shrug as she explained apologetically, “She’s four. Her imagination runs off with her sometimes. I’ve been trying to get her out of her imaginary friend stage before kindergarten.”

Mandy nodded mutely, before turning back to the table as Mrs. Wheeler wandered back off into the kitchen. She watched quietly as Holly Wheeler picked up a yellow crayon and snapped it in half, jolting only slightly in confusion, before the child was peeling off the wrapping and shading something in with the side of the crayon. Huh, Mandy thought, kid sure adapted fast, didn’t she? Weird.

She narrowed her eyes as she caught a glimpse of the child’s drawing. A dark blue sky splintered by a strike of red, and a pink figure with a mass of spiraled yellow lines atop its head in the middle of the page, with streaking colors surrounding it. Purple, and then pink, and yellow, and green and then blue, and then a huge stream of scribbled chaos above it. Mandy found her brows furrowing on her face as she mulled over the picture, before she watched Holly pick up an orange crayon and draw a set of wings. And they were wings, for certain. Ugly, obviously, the child was hardly an artistic genius—but they were definitely wings.

Holly looked over her shoulder to Mandy, and Mandy widened her eyes in shock. Because, that certainly could not have been her, right? That would have been—

The little girl took a yellow crayon and drew an angry ‘v’ in the middle of the figure’s face, before picking up another crayon and coloring in two blue dots underneath it. Holly looked back at Mandy over her shoulder, before nodding to herself and continuing on.

—impossible. It should have been fucking impossible, but Holly Wheeler somehow… somehow what? She was a fucking kid, or whatever, so it wasn’t like someone told her, right? She was being paranoid, Mandy reasoned. But the longer she stared, the more likeness she saw. Ugh, it was definitely Mandy. Even if she didn’t have fucking wings—all the color and the red sky made it unmistakeable. That was her in the upside-down place with that stupid fucking storm.

Well, fuck! Mandy swiped the picture from under the child’s hands, folding it up quickly and stuffing it in her jacket pocket like she was some kind of shifty drug dealer. She looked over to the kitchen where Hargrove and Mrs. Wheeler stood, attention pulled to Hargrove speaking in his newly adopted, soft dulcet tones. 

“I just worry about her, she’s my sister, y’know? Young and in a new place, and I know I can’t watch her all the time—“

How fucking annoying, Mandy thought to herself as her palms began to sweat. Her blood ran hot at how fucking frustratingly controlling Hargrove was. He couldn’t just fucking leave his redheaded stepsister alone, could he?! God, he was awful! It was hard enough being ginger, for fuck’s sake! He really needed to leave Max alone before Mandy had to teach him a lesson.

Her blood pressure was sky-rocketing, and she was kind of over-reacting right now, she realized rather distantly. Her pulse was slamming through her head, and her eyes were suddenly watering, and she felt like she was going to be ousted by a little blonde child of all fucking people. A little blonde psychic child. It was horrific. She didn’t think she could go out like this. She would have preferred being found out by maybe decimating a town and having to be hunted down by some secret government branch that took care of freaks like her. Something dramatic. Historic, maybe. But not being drawn by some little brat in Crayola crayon! 

“Fairy,” Holly Wheeler called, brows raised as Mandy glared in her direction, “You want to draw?”

No, she wanted to leave! Or cry! Or, God fucking help her, hide somewhere dark and quiet until all the terror that was pulsing through her faded away. 

Mandy felt so hot and cold, she was sweating and a shudder still ran through her at the little girl’s call. She looked to her with her smiling face and sweet eyes, and didn’t know what to do. Mandy picked up a crayon robotically, eyes boring into Holly Wheeler’s happy little face, before she was drawing a sunflower in the corner of the page rather distractedly. It seemed to please the girl, and she hummed, before picking up a blue crayon and coloring another flower right beside hers.

“So your flower isn’t lonely,” The little girl explained, and Mandy gave a stunted sigh, trying to calm herself.

God, Mandy really fucking hated kids.


	19. Don't Give Yourself Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This Just In: Local Teens in Hawkins, Indiana Partake in Hijinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so, lol, this chap emotionally abused me p much and that's gonna be my excuse for why it's late. tbh i wasn't rly sure about this chap for the whole time I have been editing it. I kept feeling like tossing it b/c it feels too... like... absurd??? lol but i just kept it b/c it DOES have character growth and also, the day i felt like scrapping it into the death pile of my writing, i snort-laughed when i was reading thru it one last time so¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ i figured someone might like it too?? and that it might be worth sharing??? lol idek just take my garbage writing <3
> 
> AND AS PER USUAL! I love you guys SO MUCH tbh. every message yall send me leaves my heart all aflutter. I'm ALWAYS so surprised that ppl like my writing and efnsjdkbadjvbkvdjs honestly, you guys have really kept me going this past month or so b/c I've been struggling through it lately so thank you all so much for the support and love. I'm weak and soft and am unashamed to say i need it sometimes to keep me going lol <3
> 
> also, p.s. everyone, this chap is almost all billy so lmao you've been warned
> 
> also, p.p.s. the title for this chap is 100% inspired by that one song. yknow??? the one by Cheap Trick??? lol

At first, Billy thought it was something he did.

“Listen,” Mandy began, her voice hushed as she snagged his elbow once Mrs. Wheeler walked down the basement stairs with a tray of cookies, “I think I’m gonna, uh, ride home with Harrington.”

“What?” Billy blurted out in reply to the nervous way Mandy’s eyes darted over her shoulder. She looked back at him, gaze a little frenetic as it jumped between each of his eyes respectively, before she was nodding and waving her arms around wildly.

“No, no, no,” Mandy said, voice a little strange sounding to Billy’s ears as she visibly, distractedly pondered something for a moment, “You’re right. He’s already pissed me off today. I’ll just walk.”

Billy couldn’t help the sputtered laugh he gave at her strange behavior, asking again, even louder, _“What?”_

Mandy rose her brows, reiterating slowly, “I said I’m gonna—“

Billy’s brow folded, and he waved his arms around her face to silence her, before explaining, “I heard you, Dipshit. What the hell do you mean you’re gonna _walk_ home? Since when are you a fan of hiking, huh?”

“Uh,” Mandy droned out, lip curling as she contemplated his words, “Well, since now, I guess. The cold will do me some good, I think.”

_“The cold will—“_ Billy echoed incredulously, before pausing and looking around them bewilderedly, “What the hell are you talking about? You sound like a total fucking fruitcake right now.”

“Listen, you caveman,” Mandy began, her voice returning to its regular frosty tone for a split second as she drawled out abhorringly, “I know this is gonna be, like, _revolutionary_ to you, but some people do this wild thing called _thinking_ —“

Billy gave a loud scoff at her words, shifting on his feet as he set his hands atop his belt and shot her an unimpressed look, “And you need to walk home to do that?”

“Well, thinking is often times done best when in solitude,” Mueller announced like a miserable fucking know-it-all, “I know you wouldn’t know that from experience, so I’ll forgive your ignorance this time, but—“

“Jesus, Queenie, give it a _fucking_ rest,” Billy sneered, rolling his eyes, bending towards her upturned face as he breathed out lowly, plucking at the hem of her jacket to emphasize his words, “You’re not gonna walk home in the middle of fucking December. I’m not gonna let you do that in some little preppy tweed coat and capri pants. I think it’s actually cold enough to snow here.”

“This is not tweed, first of all, and my fucking pants are cuffed, not capri cut,” Mandy retorted instantaneously, and just the first half of her statement had Billy squaring his shoulders and stuffing his hands into his pockets agitatedly as he stared her down. She gave a roll of her eyes as she continued, “And I’ll be fine. Unlike you, Lizard Boy, I’m warm blooded. Built to withstand the cold. Fit as a goddamn ox.”

Okay, so that statement was a lot of bullshit for Billy to have to shift through, and he found himself giving an audible groan and lolling his head back, before finally just tossing his arms out of his pockets and exclaiming belligerently, “Jesus Christ! I don’t fucking care! You’re not walking! And that’s fuckin’ that!”

“Oh!” And, of _fucking_ course, Mrs. Wheeler just had to take that moment to reappear in the kitchen with them, “Am I interrupting something?”

It was looking likely that he was about to lose favor with the older woman, until Billy got a bright idea, and waved a hand in Mandy’s direction as he explained with feigned sobriety, “Mandy, here, won’t let me drive her home. Thinks that it— _I don’t know_ —gives people the wrong impression, I guess. But what kinda man would I be if I just let her walk alone in the cold? Right?”

“Excuse me?” Mandy piped in from beside him, “Did you just refer to yourself as a man?”

Billy shot her a dull glare from the corner of his eye as Mrs. Wheeler cooed over Mueller’s grumbled musings, “Oh, well, I think that’s very chivalrous of you, Billy—“

Billy bared his teeth in a tight smile, biting out in Mandy’s direction from behind gritted teeth, “You’re excused.”

“—And it is very cold in December, the news says it might even snow within the next week—“ Mrs. Wheeler continued to ramble over their tight-lipped glaring-match.

His words had been barely audible under Karen Wheeler’s clear voice, but Mueller definitely heard him, if her unintelligible bluster of disagreement was anything to go by, before she relented under Mrs. Wheeler’s guilt trip, flapping a hand around as she called out with a sarcasm laden tone, “Fine! Great! Billy can give me the ride of my damn life! Won’t that just be wonderful?!”

Mrs. Wheeler gave a startled little _‘oh!’_ at Mandy’s words, obviously catching the innuendo as she put a hand to her chest, looking almost scandalized, before shooting Billy a set of raised brows. Billy merely mirrored her expression, hoping he didn’t look half as amused as he really was by Mueller’s innate way of constantly causing the innocent populous great unrest. He didn’t know if it did much towards the effect, since he was currently trying to withhold from laughing openly at the situation by pinching his lips together.

“It would be my honor,” Billy announced gravely, putting a hand over his heart and trying to look like the alter boy he never was. Karen nodded fondly at his charade, and Mandy growled like a hungry lioness, looking probably as murderous as she could look without actually committing murder. It was kind of hot, and Billy bit his lip, brows raising on his face as he gazed at her sidelong.

So, he won this round, and got what he wanted in the end. Mueller crossed her arms and returned back to the kitchen table huffily, sitting down in the plain wooden chair like she was a queen sitting her royal ass upon her golden throne, looking all haughty and stoic. Billy watched her go before rolling his eyes playfully and jerking a thumb in her direction, while settling his gaze heavily onto Karen Wheeler.

“She’s real fun at parties,” He announced dismissively, and Mrs. Wheeler merely laughed at his poorly hidden exasperation.

“I can only imagine,” The older woman agreed. 

They ended up talking for a few more minutes, and Billy had easily managed to wrangle her into watching Max a few days of the week. He figured if Max was at the Wheelers’, Billy at least had some fucking time to himself, and he would happily put up with the idea that Max was hanging out with Lucas Sinclair and the rest of those dorks if he could just have a few extra hours of freedom. It seemed like a reasonable trade, honestly. His freedom was so rare in the shithole that was Hawkins, Indiana that he would have probably sawed off his left fucking arm for it at this point, so this was light in comparison. And, Billy reasoned, his dad couldn’t even get mad at him if he found out that Max was hanging out with a black kid. It wouldn’t be happening under Billy’s watch anymore. _Whew,_ Billy was feeling mighty fucking fine over his cleverness in the moment.

By the time he was leaving, pausing to shoot Karen Wheeler a charming grin and leaning into the doorframe with what some could say was too much foxiness, Mueller was marching between their faces and ducking her head under Billy’s arm, ultimately throwing off his weight and making him stumble a little clumsily from the doorway. He shot a look at her retreating form from over his shoulder, gaping a little incredulously at the audacious move, before turning back to Mrs. Wheeler as he tried to train his features back into their previous easiness.

“Thanks for the talk,” Billy said with a smile, “I’ll be back at around five to pick up Max. That sound alright?”

“Oh, that’ll be fine,” Mrs. Wheeler replied, fingers fumbling a little with the waist of her calf-length skirt, before she was flattening the fabric against her hips with a tight exhale, “I’ll make sure to watch over her while she’s here. Make sure to, ahem, be _safe._ ”

Billy opened his mouth to reply, only for Mueller’s annoying, nasally, whining voice to call from over his shoulder, “ _C’mon!_ Should I just start walking, or are you actually gonna drive me home already?!”

The sound that left him at the sound of Mandy’s grating voice was somehow both a sigh and a low growl, and Billy choked slightly as he tried to battle it down, before croaking out to himself, “Should’ve just let her freeze her tight little ass off. See how big she’d talk then.”

Mrs. Wheeler cleared her throat, catching Billy’s attention and reminding him that he was in front of somebody’s mother and talking about Mandy Mueller’s ass. Oops, he guessed. Billy arced his brows high, hoping to seem a little less criminal as he shot Mrs. Wheeler an innocent pair of wide, blue eyes.

Louder, he announced as he stepped back from the front door, making to move towards the walkway, “She’s great. I gotta go now, but I’ll be back at around five!”

“Seems wonderful,” Mrs. Wheeler replied primly, and Billy rose his brows, a little unsure if she was referring to Mueller’s attitude or his eventual return. He merely waved his hand in her direction with a smile, assuming he misinterpreted her tone, before turning around and walking towards where Mueller awaited him, leaning lazily against his car, legs and arms crossed.

He rounded the car to unlock the door, and from over the hood of the cab, Mandy whispered venomously, her face only slightly turned towards him, “Mommy Wheeler seems wonderful, Hargrove. The smell of Ponds cold cream and luke warm milk was practically enchanting. No wonder she gets you so hot.”

Billy promptly shoved his key into the keyhole with an audible scrape, blinking at Mandy Mueller’s dismissive sneer from across his car.

His mind was currently screaming at him two very different thoughts. Mandy Mueller was mad at him over one of the varying, objectively terrible things he’d said or done within the passed hour or so, one half of his brain supplied very reasonably, while the other half of his head was on fire and blazingly shouting that Mandy Mueller was actually _jealous!_ Mandy Mueller was jealous over some middle aged woman that he was nice to! Oh, God, it was too fucking good of a thought, he couldn’t even fully commit himself to it! But, damn! Wouldn’t it have been fucking great if it were true, though? Billy could get off on that thought alone. He made _Mandy Mueller,_ easily the most beautiful, aloof girl he’d ever met, _jealous._ He actually made her feel something besides _contempt_ for him. Ooh, that was nice. 

“What?” Was all his mouth had to say on the matter, and Mandy merely shot him a look of glaring repulsion, looking almost a little frustrated that he didn’t say something mean to her in reply. What the hell did she want from him, really? Was he supposed to come to Karen Wheeler’s defense like a goddamn guard dog? She was a full grown woman! She also probably did use Ponds—she seemed like the type—but so fucking what? Mueller could fucking bitch about it all she wanted. He didn’t fucking care.

“Ugh! It’s like you’ve forgotten the entire English language suddenly! Why do I even bother?!” Mandy huffed out, trying to rip open the door, only to promptly jerk back in surprise when the door didn’t open. Billy snorted back a laugh at her frustrated yelp, before he replied levelly.

“I haven’t unlocked the door yet,” He announced unnecessarily, hand still on his keys where they were dangling from the keyhole, and Mandy stomped a foot at his obvious amusement over her stupidity.

“Yeah, thanks! I got that!” 

“Yeah, sure,” He drawled, turning the key in the lock and popping open the door, “No problem.”

The moment she was able, Mueller was tearing into the car like the Tasmanian Devil, swinging out her door viciously and shoving herself so violently into the car that it rocked on its wheels, and Billy could only look on confusedly for a moment, before sliding in himself once the car finally stopped moving. Once he was inside, he adjusted himself by the seat of his pants, trying to settle comfortably into the tightness of his jeans, before pulling on his seatbelt and buckling himself in. He leaned back into his seat and gave pause at Mueller beside him, struggling to wrestle with her own seatbelt with fumbling, uncoordinated hands.

It was probably the first time he’d seen her actually seem a little helpless in a situation, and he immediately jumped at the chance to help her, unbuckling himself to lean across her body.

“Here, I got it,” He said, reaching for the seatbelt to fiddle with the pillar loop over her shoulder, “It gets stuck sometimes. Must’ve gotten fucked up when we stopped too fast earlier—“

He belatedly realized their close proximity, only noticing the fact when the girl under his arm gave a soft breath that gusted into the shell of his ear. He gave a too-hard tug in reply, freeing the locked belt finally and letting it whip back into the retractor. When he looked into her face, her eyes were drawn over to his handiwork, brows down as she pored over what he just managed to do, and he gave a little sigh, kind of disappointed he might have missed some important emotion that had been on her face that could have helped him unlock the mystery to what made her so unattainable.

As he was busy inwardly lamenting his missed opportunity, her bright eyes looked back to him, expression soft and feathered brows resting levelly on her face for what seemed like the first time ever. He held his breath as their gazes met, suddenly overcome, and he had to fight down the part of him that was ready to latch his mouth onto any part of her. He accidentally glanced down at her mouth and almost groaned aloud at how fucking perfect her lips looked this close. Fuck, she was so irritating and perfect, _all the fucking time._

“Thanks,” She replied, voice sounding almost pleased as she gave the belt a tug, leading it over to the buckle with a light zip. Billy merely blinked down at her for a moment, before leaning away from her and plopping back down into his seat numbly.

“Yeah, sure,” He said, still watching her from the corner of his eye, a little stupefied at the almost nice way her voice rang in his ears. He didn’t know what to make of her little moment of seeming humanity, and said nothing else on the matter, following her lead and buckling himself in as well.

* * *

Billy shouldn’t have been surprised. 

Mandy Mueller was elevated for being rich and prissy and stuck up, so he really should not have been surprised that her house was as big and fancy as it was. The outside was a stark white with sharp lines and window-lined walls, and the entire home was completely surrounded by dense forest. It was so well-hidden he hadn’t even seen it when he first pulled into the driveway.

“Here,” Mueller had commanded flatly, and Billy paused as he looked at the dense shrubbery along the right side of the car.

“What?” He asked, and Mandy tapped her finger against the window, glancing over to him.

“Turn right here,” She restated, and Billy’s brows had rose in confusion as he slowed the car.

“There’s nothing here, Queenie,” He briefly wondered it she was losing it, or suffering some kind of concussion from the night previous, or something.

She settled a vaguely frustrated expression on him, shooting him a dull look, before she was gesticulating with a single palm towards the forest, “This is my fucking driveway, Hargrove! Seriously, just turn here!”

He pulled onto the dirt path, his entire car jostling as he went off road, and he cringed to himself. Fuck, he swore to himself, if he so much as got a chip in the fucking paint, Mandy Mueller was gonna get it from him. No bullshit about it.

And then they drove for a good five minutes—or maybe three, really, but still, it felt like too long of a time to drive down a driveway. Eventually, the rocks and gravel turned into smooth pavement, and then they rounded the bend, and he came across the giant, modern behemoth that was her home.

A small stab of jealousy ran through him. Mandy Mueller’s house was like a MTV music video, all modern lines and floor to ceiling windows, and _god,_ when could he move in?! Fuck, Mandy Mueller had it all. Good looks, expensive foreign car, and a fucking lavish mansion that might as well been straight out of Scarface. And to think, just last night he was thinking Steve Harrington’s little tree house was fucking lush. Goddamn, this house blew his little cabin in the woods right out of the water.

“Mandy!” A voice bellowed while Billy was busy staring intensely at the home and trying to see in each window to spy what lied inside. 

“Oh, no,” Mandy squeaked, spinning around to fumble with the seatbelt while Billy was busy whipping his head around in search of the source of the voice. When he turned to help her with the buckle, ducking his head to fiddle with the closure, a loud knocking came from his window, and he jumped so high that the back of his head slammed into Mueller’s face. She gave a shout of pain, before rubbing her chin, and Billy sat up straight, grabbing her face to inspect it.

“Shit! Sorry,” He muttered, cradling her jaw as he squinted at the reddened spot on her chin, while her hands flapped around his arms, trying to bat his touch off of her.

“Get out of this fucking car, Mandy!” The knocking started up again, and Mandy sighed, ripping her face out of Billy’s hold as she shouted.

“Dad! Oh, my God, stop! Jesus Christ!” She exclaimed, before she was swinging the belt off and letting it zip away from her. She pushed the door open and stepped outside, holding her arms out as she asked snarkily, “Where the hell’s the fire?! What the fuck is wrong with you!?”

“Oh, so all of a sudden you hear me, huh?” Her father shot back, and all at once, Billy didn’t know what to do. He was literally trapped between two shouting people and so fucking confused and overwhelmed by the ruckus around him. He found himself helplessly facing Mueller’s faceless body where she stood in the opened passenger’s door, just because she was something familiar to him. She stomped, before giving a huff, and he noticed for the first time the way her fists balled up, knuckles turning white when she did it. She shifted on her feet, cocking a hip.

“What the hell do you mean?! I just got here, Dad! I don’t know why you’re even yelling at me right now!” Mandy shot back, arms flying around wildly.

“That’s right, Cupcake! You ain’t even been home! You make a mess and then run off to who the fuck knows where! How the hell did you even manage to get anywhere without your car, anyway?!” Billy felt only the slightest bit better knowing that even Mueller’s dad seemed to be equally as befuddled by the shit she managed to pull off.

Mandy seemed to be speechless, shifting on her feet and waving her arms around as she tried to choke out a reply. Eventually, she slapped her hands back down to her sides and announced, “I don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to answer that question, Dad—“

Her father cut her off, “Alright, then how about this—what the hell happened to your car, Mandy?”

Mandy’s form froze in the open door, all her limbs falling still, and her father mocked snootily, “Oh, all of a sudden you don’t got too much to say, huh?”

She gave a pained sigh, “Daddy, _please,_ not right now. Not in front of people.”

“Oh, so I’m Daddy now, huh? Now I know you’re full of shit—Hey!” A loud knock on the window pane behind his head startled Billy, and he spun around to meet the heated glare of a man with slicked back hair and a pinched mouth. So, Billy thought rather distantly, this was Mueller’s father. It made sense. He met the man’s piercing gaze from where he loomed beyond the window, and before he even knew what he was doing, Billy was reaching back behind himself and fumbling around for the window switch, “Yeah, you, Curly-Q—“

Billy rose his brows, pressing the button and watching as the window rolled down between them, “Uh… yeah?”

“Aw, Dad, c’mon—” Mandy began, giving an exasperated sigh, “Leave him out of this.”

“You know what the fuck happened to my daughter’s car, Hotshot?” The man’s brows arched down, and Billy found himself glancing back to see Queenie leaning down into the passenger side, giving him an identical look that had him rearing back. Fuck, that was really uncanny. He was definitely about to get himself into trouble with his reply, no matter what it was. Jesus Christ, he couldn’t ever win.

“Um, uh—“ Right, so the way he was stuttering like a middle schooler with a speech impediment wasn’t fucking pathetic or anything. He rose his brows helplessly in Mueller’s direction, and she shot him a severe look in reply that Billy could only translate to mean: _You better not fuck this up, Hargrove._ Billy found himself scowling just from seeing her look as he swung his head around to face Mandy’s dad, his voice trained into a lower timbre as he answered, “I don’t know. Should I know?”

“Oh-ho-ho—“ The man wagged a finger at him, leaning out of the window before settling his weight on one foot and looking over to his daughter on the opposite side of the car, “You’ve brought home a new little toy, huh, Cupcake? And he’s _loyal—_ “

“Dad, stop being annoying, or so help me—“ Mandy threatened, waving a single finger around out of Billy’s sight, “I swear to god, you can’t function like a normal person for a damn minute!”

“What?” Her father began, voice sarcastic and all-knowing, “So some boy brings my sweet angel home in his hotrod, and I ain’t allowed to be a little curious?”

Mandy let out a long groan, before she was stomping her foot, “Don’t play mind games, Dad! Don’t act like you give a shit about some random guy who drove me home! I cannot believe you sometimes! You’re seriously harassing some poor boy for information right now, Dad! Like, ugh! You don’t even know him—“

“Hey, son,” The older man leaned into the window rather theatrically, “What’s your name there, Cowboy?”

“Billy,” He replied plainly, glancing over his shoulder to see Mandy tapping her toe on the pavement as she placed her hands on her hips. He was almost taken aback by the body language. It was probably the most irritated he had ever seen Mueller, and Billy couldn’t even see her face, “Uh, Billy Hargrove.”

“Billy, huh?” Her father squinted at him in the window, and Billy found himself suddenly reminded of the way Mueller squinted when she was deep in thought. Fuck, that was seriously uncanny, “Well, I’m Pete. Peter Mueller, obviously, since I am Mandy’s father—see, Mandy? We’re great friends, Billy and I—“

“Alright, that’s fucking it, Dad! I’m running away! You like Billy so much, huh? Fucking adopt him then, because I’m leaving forever!!” Her exclamation had Billy shooting her a look through the windshield as she rounded the front of the car, her ponytail bouncing almost violently in her wake.

“Mandy—!” Her father yelled right back, “Don’t be such a drama queen!”

Mandy spun around, her brows raised expectantly and her eyes looking more than ready for a fight as her jaw clenched, “Or what?! Who’s gonna stop me?!”

Billy felt so fucking under fire it wasn’t even funny. He wasn’t even the one being yelled at, either. He was just close enough that he felt at any given moment if something blew up, he was going to find himself in the middle of some serious shit. 

Rich people were something else, and he could probably complain about it for fucking hours after this dramatic bullshit.

“Or—!!” The older man seemed at a loss for words for a moment before he was shouting, “Or you’re grounded! Now you tell me just what the fuck happened to your car, you little shit!!”

Her whole chest heaved as she gave an indignant gasp, her voice echoing incredulously, “Grounded?!”

“Yeah, you heard me!” Her father smirked, looking too proud of himself, and suddenly Billy was starting to see where a lot of Mueller’s nuanced obnoxiousness came from.

Turns out, being a bitch may have actually been genetic. Who would’ve thought?

“Oh, so now who’s being a drama queen, Dad?!” 

“That’s it—“

“Why is there so much yelling out here?!” Billy stuck his head out of the window with his entire left arm dangling against his car door as a new person showed up on the front step of the house. 

She was an eyeful, and Billy lost all motor function briefly as he caught sight of the woman’s ample chest that was on full display. He blinked, and he heard his jaw snap shut before it even occurred to him that it was hanging open in disbelief. _Holy shit…_ that had to have been Mandy Mueller’s mother. And her father was standing right beside him as he ogled the woman’s amazing assets. He didn’t have enough self-control to even be ashamed at that point.

_Jesus_ —he was salivating at the sight of her. She was glorious in her short little oriental robe and lace underwear. No woman should have been allowed to be that good looking and in such little clothes, Billy thought.

The woman closed her robe, and Billy released a breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding. It left him like air left a punctured balloon, wheezing just slightly from his suddenly tight throat. The sound caught Mandy’s attention from between the headlights, and she whipped her head around to shoot him a foul look. Billy really couldn’t blame her for it, he knew he probably looked like a fucking jackass drooling over her mother. He couldn’t help it, though. The woman was a walking fucking wet-dream! All long blonde hair and never-ending tan legs that he would have loved to lick his way up if given the chance—oh, and before he forgot—with a fucking mesmerizing rack. Her tits could rule the world if they so pleased.

Distantly, Billy heard what he was almost positive was Mandy Mueller giving a strangled sound of distress.

_“Moooom!”_ Mueller shrieked out, sounding infantile and shrill as she waved an accusing finger in the vague direction of her father, and also by proximity, Billy, “Dad is holding my friend from school hostage—!“

“Cissy, honey, go back in the house. You don’t have any goddamn clothes on—“

Oh, my God, Billy’s mind was shutting down. It really was her mom! He was inwardly hysterical as the fact was confirmed aloud. Fuck, he wanted to throw his head back and groan. A hot mom and a hot daughter—it was a wombo-combo that had all his blood draining from all the useful places in his body. He was going to pass out, he was almost positive. He was reeling. Was he even alive? He had no clue. He couldn’t even feel his body anymore. He was suddenly overcome with the intense need to see Mandy Mueller’s tits. He had to know if she was as hot as her mom without clothes on. He wouldn’t allow himself to _die_ without finding out. 

“I was in the middle of getting ready—“ Mueller’s mom, Cissy— _ugh, god, what a name_ —replied with a wave of her hands, her silk robe slipping open again, and Billy’s head bobbed to follow the movement, instead only managing to stupidly whack his forehead into the top of the car door at full velocity. It rang with a gong, and his eyes rolled around in his skull for a moment, before he shook out his head to rid himself of the discombobulating sensation. By the time he reoriented himself, Mueller’s mom had already grabbed her robe and tucked it tightly around her body. Shit, he wasted the precious milliseconds he could have stared at her magical breasts.

“What do you mean? Where are we going?” Mandy asked cluelessly, crossing her arms and cocking her head as she broke Billy out of his reverie. 

The man beside him shot Mandy a dirty look.

“You’re not invited—“

“I’m not invited?! You’re abandoning me—your _only_ child?!”

“You took off to do god knows what all day, so yes, you’re uninvited, Mandy!” Mandy gave a quiet gasp at her father’s words, placing a single hand to her heart as if she were mortally wounded.

“Daddy—“

“Don’t you daddy me, you little sneak!” Her father shouted back belligerently, “If you don’t give me the goddamn name of whoever did that to your car, Mandy, I swear—you’re gonna be in deep shit!”

Mandy’s previously ashen complexion ripened with a furious blush across her face, and Billy rose his brows he watched her ball up her fists and purse her lips like a rotten child readying themselves for a tantrum. 

“Well, what if I don’t know?! What then, Dad?!” Mandy finally exclaimed, “What the hell are you gonna do about it?!”

“Mandy!” Her father stomped around the driver’s side of the car towards to headlights, while Mandy crossed her arms, shifting on her feet and swaying her hips like she was ready for a fight, and Billy found himself leaning forward in anticipation for what was going to happen. 

The whole Mueller brood seemed to be fucking crazy, honestly. So far, all he’d seen of them was screaming, and cursing, and semi-public nudity, and he was clueless as to how the rest of this scenario was going to play out. 

Her father squared up in front of Mueller, pointing a single warning finger in her face, “You listen to me, you goddamn rugrat—you’re _my_ fucking kid, you got that? So if some little prick is messing with you, it’s my job to make sure he fucking regrets it until the day he goddamn dies. So cough up a fucking name already!”

“Well, I don’t know—“

“God, I can’t believe I raised an awful child that would lie to me like this! You’re poor dead grandmother would die all over again if she could see you right now, Mandy! Cut the bullshit! I know you know who did this!”

Mandy gaped indignantly, waving a single arm around as she exclaimed, “Why are you always looking for a fight, Dad?! Can’t I solve my own bullshit without you coming around and making everything worse?!”

Stillness enveloped everyone for a beat, the sounds of heavy breathing heard. The longer the moment stretched on, the higher Billy’s eyebrows rose, his eyes darting to all three figures before him. And then, the moment broke back into bedlam.

Her father stared hard at her for a long moment, before he was pointing viciously down at Mandy, “I fucking knew it! Those fucking rats! The Radner’s—“

And then he was taking off toward the house as Mandy stood there waving her arms around wildly at her father’s retreating back, “When did I say it was the Radner’s?! Hey, _Dad!!_ Uh, what the fuck?!”

“Aw, c’mon, Petey—” Her mother’s voice was heard as Peter Mueller stomped up the front steps of the house, looking like a man on a mission. He simply shrugged off the woman before she even fully touched him, and she rolled her eyes dismissively as he barreled passed her, “Don’t be like this when your daughter finally brings friends over, Pete—“

“Dad?!” Mandy screeched from the driveway, before she was marching off after him, blonde hair flying wildly, “Answer me, Dad!!”

Unlike with Mueller’s dad, her mother didn’t even try to stop her, crossing her arms over her small silk rode and getting out of the way as Mandy tore into the house, swinging herself out of sight by the door frame. The sound of doors slamming and banging made its way to Billy’s ears, and he found himself feeling inexplicably empty. Her mother stood on the stoop, hanging her head very briefly before giving a sigh that Billy saw more than heard. She looked up and spotted him watching her, before making her way over.

Billy tried to look cool, but found it suddenly very unnatural and promptly dropped it in favor of staring emotionlessly at the woman as she approached. The closer she got the more she looked like her daughter, and Billy found himself almost squinting when she finally stopped before the open driver’s window looking all radiant and beautiful and statuesque. His insides squirmed, and he felt like a helpless schoolboy with a crush. Shit, someone come put him out of his misery. She was even better looking up close.

“Hello,” She began tentatively, holding her arms around her body uncomfortably, and Billy rose his brows. Her voice was a soft, angelic lull, and how the hell had Mandy ever come from such a lovely woman? She seemed to be more of her father’s daughter, truly, and Billy didn’t know how he could manage to be surprised. Rich, prissy girls were almost always daddy’s girls.

“Uh, hi,” His confidence was growing at the woman’s discomfort and he found himself willing to put on a smile for show. Perfect, they were both in the same fucking boat.

“So, you lent my daughter your car? That was very kind of you,” She supplied, and Billy found himself struggling not to fiddle with his hands. He had to actively stop himself from grabbing at the steering wheel for some dumbass reason. What the fuck was wrong with him? He was so fucking nervous. The woman was just so fucking tan and beautiful and ugh—he really wanted a cigarette.

He faked a laugh, nodding, and because saying the truth would have probably reignited his anger, he lied, “Yeah, I did, actually. Got it back all in one piece, too.”

Sounds of screaming erupted from within the house, and both of them turned to look toward the commotion. From within one window, Billy spied Mandy sprinting up the stairs with her father at her heels, a phone cradled in her hold as she shrieked at the top of her lungs. Her father ran after her, looking slightly winded as he almost fell going up the staircase, before he was promptly stomping on the phone line that was trailing after her, making her jerk back and drop to the ground with a shout of distress. Billy couldn’t help it, he found himself chuckling at the sight paired with the profuse cursing he heard from within the home. He leaned back and crossed his arms as Mueller’s blonde ponytail bobbed along the bottom of the window pane, before she was completely out of sight.

“Ugh, Dad!” Mandy’s disembodied voice complained, “You’re being such a lame bitch right now! I can’t believe this!”

“Thank you for bringing her home safely,” Billy’s attention was torn away from the drama taking place within the home as he looked back to the gorgeous half-naked woman before him, “I would invite you in for some food, but—“

Billy really didn’t mean to sound so eager when he replied almost instantaneously, “That’d be great. I’m starving.”

* * *

Billy did not mean to somehow find his way into Mandy Mueller’s house, but he wasn’t exactly regretting it now that he had. 

“Thanks, Mrs. Mueller,” He smiled, pulling the plate she placed before him even closer as he leaned forward on his elbows and watched her move around the expansive kitchen in her silky robe, the underside of her ass exposed as she bent to get something from the lower cabinets. Everything around him was all white and marble, and every single move he made echoed into the space almost disproportionately loudly, so he tried to refrain from allowing his body to shift in his seat as he watched Mueller’s mom bend at the waist over the kitchen island. 

“You’re welcome, Sweetie,” Billy was trying not to gush at the woman’s sweet coo, or let his eyes trail down to her generous cleavage, so he shoved the sandwich into his mouth viciously to distract himself, and Mandy’s mother rose her brows as she watched him, “Oh, you’re quite the hungry boy.” 

Billy wiped his mouth, giving her what he hoped would be an innocent look. She simply cocked her head and smiled at him, and _ooh_ , it made him forget he had bones for a second. She had pretty eyes, and the shape of her mouth was like—

“Cissy, go control your daughter, she’s tearing the phone lines from the walls!” A booming voice exclaimed out of sight, disrupting his thoughts entirely, before Mandy’s father was stomping into the room with a cordless phone in his hands, completely missing the receiver, “I swear to God, she gets more crafty every day!”

Billy didn’t need to be told that. He had already figured that one out.

Without missing a beat, her mother replied dully, “When she acts like this, she’s your daughter, Pete.”

Her father simply slammed the phone down onto the counter top with a noisy exhale, before settling his angry gaze onto Billy’s form, “What the hell are you still doing here, Cowboy?”

Being nosy, honestly, and getting fed while also ogling his eye-candy wife—but he couldn’t just fucking say that, could he? Billy didn’t reply, raising his brows as he stuffed more of the sandwich into his mouth.

“Oh, leave the boy alone, Pete—“

“I think he should leave entirely, Sweetheart—“

“Peter!” Mandy’s mother admonished, spinning on spot and shooting her husband an exasperated look that had the older man shrugging in his black v-neck sweater. He totally looked like some rich scumbag with his gelled hair and year-long tan, and Billy kind of resented him for it. The man just looked like he had too much money and power to ever be denied anything, and Billy found himself a little bit on edge in his presence. He had a big mouth and silver fucking tongue, and he seemed to always need the last word. Billy suddenly understood why Mueller didn’t put up with any bullshit—someone definitely took after their daddy.

The older man simply gave her a tired look, before he was muttering, “I need to get out of this house. It’s filled with soul-sucking harpies—“

“I can hear you,” Mrs. Mueller announced dully, placing a hand on her hip as she lazily waved the other one around, “But please, do go on, Darling. I would love a good quote for the divorce lawyer.”

The man of the house simply pursed his lips, shooting Billy a vaguely hateful look that had Billy raising his brows in reply. From somewhere in the house, the sound of slamming doors was heard, followed by a large clatter, and then another door slam, before the sound of heavy footfalls rumbled down the staircase.

“I’m leaving forever!” Mandy’s disembodied voice declared heatedly from somewhere beyond Billy’s line of sight, even though all the marble in the home had her voice echoing all around him.

“With what car, Hothead?!” Mr. Mueller shouted back smartly, and her footfalls multiplied quickly, going from a clack-clack-squeak to a _clackityclackitysqueaksqueak_ , and Billy could almost imagine her in his head sprinting across the interior of the house, that hilariously determined look on her face as she set herself on doing something reckless. He knew something was up, even before either of her parents suspected anything, and he found himself shooting the both of them anxious looks as he awaited her reply.

“You know which car!” She shot back, diabolical laughter ringing out all around them. Finally, the sound of one last door smacking shut was heard. Both of her parents sported similar looks of bewilderment, looking frozen over and wide-eyed like deers in headlights.

Everyone in kitchen paused, before Billy was muttering cluelessly to himself, “Which car is she taking—?”

And then an engine roared to life, and Mueller’s father was tearing from the room with a furious expression as a garage door was heard rattling open.

_“Mandy Pandora Mueller—!!“_

Billy startled as he heard her full name, sandwich looming midair before his mouth. The sliced tomatoes that had been within the two pieces of Wonderbread slipped out and dropped into his plate with a splat. It couldn’t have been possible. He hadn’t ever heard a more ironic middle name. _Mandy Pandy Mueller._ No fucking wonder Carol called her that all the time! He made sure to take note. He was going to have some fun with that for sure.

Tires peeling out broke him out of his thoughts, and he dropped his sandwich as he spun around to get a brief glimpse of a sleek black car fishtailing in the driveway and just barely missing his Camaro. His heart flew into his throat for a moment and he jumped to his feet instinctively as he watched the Ferrari take a sharp turn right, tires squealing and smoke rising from the pavement as it swerved right around his car. He tried not to gape, shutting his jaw with a clack, before dropping back into his seat numbly. He gave a heavy exhale.

Fuck, Mandy Mueller was going to give him a heart attack. 

Her father stood in the middle of the driveway, lamenting and cursing as he watched his demon of a daughter drive out of sight in his prized sports car, and Billy turned to spy her mother smiling to herself as she loaded the dishwasher with plates. She peeked up as if she could feel him staring, and beamed in his direction, eyes alight as she took in his expression. It was only half as wicked as her daughter’s, but it was a wicked smile all the same. 

Billy was nearly positive his soul left his body for a split second as he spotted the smile on her face. Suddenly, he found himself not wanting to look at the previously enrapturing woman, too unsettled by a strange, phantom sensation that had settled cold in his gut. Why was that look so familiar? What the hell was he suddenly remembering? His hazy memories evaded him in the moment. What the hell did that look remind him of? 

And then he remembered—warbling sounds, and a pounding head, and then his own imaginary little Mandy Mueller staring him down and cooing, _“You’re totally out of it, Honey—“_ And her being a little too nice and sparkly, and smiling at him a weirdly soft way he hadn’t ever really seen before. Until he saw a similar smile on the real Mandy’s mother just now.

“Are you finished now, Honey?”

Billy blinked, brows knitting just slightly as he watched the older woman. 

“Yeah, thanks.”

* * *

The engine cut out, plunging the world around her into a ringing silence. She pulled up the break, removing her feet from the pedals and turning off the headlights with a flourish before leaning back into her seat with a sigh. She looked out into the inky darkness around her, squinting and mulling over her surroundings until she had decided.

She was almost positive this was the place.

She hopped out of the car, walking around it to pull a newly purchased flashlight and shovel from the trunk. With a flick, the flashlight beamed right into her face, and she winced and cursed as it blinded her momentarily, before she was pointing it at the ground and trailing along the side of the road.

She walked for a full ten minutes before she was having to double-back. She knew it wasn’t that far along the road where she saw it, and decided to return to the car and try the other direction. When she was spinning around, the flashlight illuminated the ditch along the side of road that settled right at the edge of the forest. 

And then she spotted her.

“Fuck,” Mandy grumbled as she paused, flashlight pointed down the slope before her. Settled at the bottom, with all the bramble, and broken twigs, and sodden earth, was the filth-caked, yet still undeniably golden coat of Goldie the golden retriever from the night before. The woodland creatures that were gnawing away at the corpse all looked up at her, all their black-eyes reflecting in the light, and Mandy scowled, before swinging the spade over her shoulder and calling down to them, “Scram, ya filthy animals!”

The few mice and rats that had gathered broke off with terrified squeaks, and the various large birds that had been picking away at the rotting flesh all broke off, the whisper of their wings sounding like a deafening contradiction to her ears. And then she was left with only the low growling of hungry dogs and the wide-eyes of raccoons.

The wolves bared their big teeth, letting out frothing barks and warning growls. One broke off from the other two, paws dragging through the dead leaves as it looked up at her, hackles raised from where it paced along the bottom of the slope she stood atop. The other two turned onto one another, snapping their jaws warningly at each other, before turning on the raccoons that were near them. The raccoons took off towards the shadows in every direction, making all kinds of terrible hissing and shrill chittering sounds as they fled. 

Mandy sighed, watching it all happen with tired disinterest. 

Was she seriously going to do this? Just walk down into this disgusting ditch and fight off three hungry animals for some dead fucking dog? It would have been stupid, certainly. Pointless, even. It wouldn’t have really made a difference, Mandy reasoned as she looked down at the dead body. The dog was already dead, all tore open with its insides strewn across the ground like a broken piñata. 

The thing that made up her mind glinted up at her in the dim light. A little brass tag on the dog’s neck that mattered for some stupid fucking reason to her.

Someone loved that stupid dog. Goldie had a family. She saw it. Flashes of giggling children hugging her neck and scratching behind the dog’s ears, and a mean house cat that swatted at her face when she got too close, and an amazing sandy-haired man that she loved more than fucking anything. The sun shone out of that guy’s ass in Goldie’s stupid little dog mind. He was the last face in her hazy half-gone mind at her final moments, and Mandy could almost still hear the way he whistled and called, _“Here, Goldie-girl!”_ From the dog’s memories.

She had to bury this guy’s fucking dog, or it was going to fucking haunt her forever.

Mandy swung the shovel down, practicing, just trying to find the best grip on the handle. She was going to fight off these stupid fucking dogs, she decided firmly, not willing to second-guess her decision. They were just a bunch of asshole cannibals, anyway. She really didn’t feel bad.

The first step she took down had a big branch snapping beneath her feet, and had all three of them hunching low and growling warningly. Still, Mandy refused to second-guess herself. She fucking refused! Even if she was kind of shitting her pants as all three beasts snarled in her direction, their eyes all flashing red in the light as they bared their large, ugly canines at her. She had certainly done dumber shit and survived, so this was going to be cake. They were only animals! She was a fucking human! She was not going to take this shit from some asshole mutt that took its shits in the woods! They were beneath her, and she was going to kick their fucking asses.

For fucking Goldie! And her kind of hot, old-guy owner…

Mandy refused to acknowledge her last thought as she adjusted her grip on her flashlight, deciding that she was going to have to use it as a weapon. She refused to stash it; it was too fucking dark and she was already kind of pissing her pants. No need to make her situation worse by turning off her only source of light. If she was going to be eaten by wolves, she would prefer some sort of light to be on, thank you.

She was fucked almost immediately when the first wolf lurched at her, and she jumped back, throwing her flashlight at its head without any thought whatsoever. It bonked into the animal’s face, rebounding back onto the floor, and clattering against some twigs and trash before finally seating itself into the wet earth crookedly, its single blinding beam cutting across the darkened canopy that loomed above. The beast set back its ears when it reoriented itself, coming back toward her with a rumbling bark, and Mandy made a weirdly similar sound, placing both hands on her shovel, completely giving up the grip she actually practiced in favor swinging it around like an overzealous little league baseball player with a really shitty coach.

She slammed the spade into the canine’s face, and it made a metallic bong as the beast flopped to the ground, writhing around in the dirt. She hit it once more while it was down, and she was feeling great about that, until the other two showed up. 

She had wound up at the base of the ditch with the first wolf, while the other asshole fleabags managed to circle around her and wind up further up the slope, effectively closing her off from the high ground. She spun around, wielding her weapon before her and angling her body sideways as she realized her predicament. She was boxed in, and from behind her, the dog with the fresh concussion and vendetta was now back on its feet, shaking itself off and making a bunch of low, vicious gnarling sounds.

They triangulated around her, and Mandy lowered her center of gravity, readying to swing at the first one that launched itself at her. They all padded slowly, circling around her and looking for any weak spots as they yapped at her at uneven intervals. She didn’t panic on principle alone, taking a deep breath as she eyed them warily and slowly pivoted around to keep her eye on all of them. She saw them all trapping her in, their minds functioning on pure predatory instinct.

She tapped into their thoughts almost too late, muttering herself, “Shit.”

In split seconds, they all moved. The one before her jumped high, and she swerved out of the way, swinging the shovel down atop on the second wolf’s head just as it snapped its jaws near her elbow, and it was the last mongrel, with its scraggly muted fur and its fresh head-wound curtesy of her, that managed to get her. Teeth clamped down on the back of her calf, and she found herself giving a shout, not from pain, but rather surprise, as she struggled to remain upright with the animal trying to violently jerk her leg out from underneath her. And then the first one she dodged was latching onto her arm as she tried to loose herself, dragging her right to the ground in one of her most pitiful moments of unathleticism. 

She was half upside-down on that steep slope along the side of the road, screaming at the top of her lungs as she lashed out with her shovel. It didn’t help her for shit, and ended up getting tugged out of her hold by one of the dogs while the other two locked their muzzles onto her limbs and tried tearing her apart. She heard the tear of her blazer and gave a furious roar as she reared back and punched the wolf that had her arm with its teeth pushed painfully into her flesh. It didn’t let off, only growled more, clamping down and shaking its head back and forth as it tried to maim her. 

Her body autonomy was at its lowest point. She couldn’t get herself free, and she always had one limb having to protect her vital parts, while another was trying to move, and the other two were being yanked away at by vicious animals. Nothing was going to get her out of the situation. She was collapsed in a disgusting ditch with three hungry wild animals, sticks and trash and mud all around her, with some hot guy’s dead pet a few yards away. It was dark, and isolated, and the only things around to witness this tragedy were a bunch of animals who were waiting for her to be dead so they could get in on the action. Ugh, it was all so abysmal.

She wasn’t going to go out like this. She fucking refused.

Her blood rushed through her veins, her body trembling all over as she thought of that stupid crayon drawing in her pocket, and then her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she could see _everything._

She was floating away, looking at herself all lame and weak as she clawed through the dirt and dead leaves, three wild wolves trying to rip her apart while her shovel and flashlight laid uselessly mere feet away. Her body existed beneath her, turtled in on itself, and tucking all her vital organs and veins away from the canines’ deadly mouths. 

And then she got an idea. 

Reappearing in a technicolor display of destruction, she suddenly became aware of being back in her body as she was still rolling through the dirt. The sky flew by her eyes in topsy-turvy flashes. She couldn’t tell which colors were real and which were in her head, or what flashing lights were actually stars and not hits of impact. By the time the world was done spinning around her, she was spitting out leaves and twigs from her mouth as she rose up on her hands and knees, shaking herself free of debris and hacking revoltingly against the taste of mud. She looked up from the collision sight, seeing the trench of charred, steaming earth she left in her wake, the three wolves all strewn along the edges of it. 

Mandy hopped to her feet, giving a wince when she got a twinge of pain as she settled her weight onto her right leg. She bent over to pull up the torn leg of her jeans to reveal the two puncture marks where one of the animal’s canine teeth caught her, and she complained aloud in a destitute mumble, “The one fucking day I don’t wear a good pair of boots, I do this shit. What the hell is wrong with me?”

The pain wasn’t too bad, really, once she tested her leg again, and she could easily amble back over to her shovel and flashlight, looking only slightly like a rickety, rusty tin man. 

And, in one fleeting moment of positive thinking, Mandy realized now she didn’t even have to dig a grave. She just kicked up a bunch of dirt when she crash-landed. So choice.

Only one of the wolves got back up, hobbling off pathetically, yipping and whining as it disappeared from sight. Mandy watched it go with her flashlight tucked under her arm and her shovel over her shoulder.

“What are you doing?” A voice called, and Mandy shrieked, dropping all the items in her grip as she collapsed to the ground, holding her hands above her head for protection. When nothing happened, she peeked out from between her arms tentatively, finally spotting Eleven at the top of the ditch, looking down at her with a disbelieving set of arched brows.

“Oh,” Mandy muttered, shooting the girl a dry look as she dusted herself and struggled to her feet once again, “It’s just you. Don’t fucking sneak up on me like that, Kid. I gotta weak heart. It’s cruel of you.”

Eleven’s brows rose even higher, before she was raising both her open palms as she gestured around her to all the ruination, “Why all of this? What happened?”

Mandy looked around her, taking in all the destruction around her, before scratching the back of her head and explaining, “I was being attacked by wolves.”

Eleven blinked, before her brows were furrowing in Mandy’s direction, “But what are you doing here? I thought you don’t like the outside.”

“Yeah!” Mandy replied eagerly, waving her shovel and flashlight around respectively. The lone beam of the flashlight spun around, illuminating the trees in wild flashes, multiple sets of eyes reflecting down at them from high in the canopy for a split second, before Mandy finally dropped her hands to her side and exclaimed, “Can you blame me?! There’s a ton of man-eating beasties in the woods, Kid! I almost died just a second ago!”

Eleven gave a sigh as she slumped her shoulders and tilted her head just slightly in Mandy’s direction. Mandy felt her rummage through her mind, getting flashes of drinking and fighting, and Billy Hargrove’s nefarious, blood-reddened mouth as he tossed his head back and cackled in the middle of a torrent of chaos, and then her despairing wails in the police trooper, and Hopper’s face as he smiled comfortingly—and then, finally, the dog, and Steve Harrington’s glossy-eyes as he looked down and soothed it to it to its final rest.

“Dog?” Eleven asked, and Mandy understood what she meant immediately, nodding wordlessly, “You came out here for a _dog?”_

El gave her a pair of wide-eyes, surprise and curiosity radiating off her in waves, and Mandy really did not like where her mind was headed. She had to distract her.

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” Mandy dismissed, waving a hand around lazily, “I know, already, okay? Just help me with this so I can get some damn rest.”

Eleven nodded quietly, giving a smoldering look with her emotive eyes that had Mandy pursing her lips and looking blandly at the younger girl from the corner of her gaze. Like, if she could kindly not bring up the out-of-character selflessness Mandy was currently exhibiting, that would be great. It wasn’t ever happening again. Like, ever. So Eleven needed to let it go. Like, this was it. This was the last nice thing she was ever doing.

“Not awful,” Eleven sang under her breath as they both tromped through the debris towards Goldie’s body, and Mandy stopped to whip her head around and give her a lousy look.

“Shut it, Smartass,” Mandy groused, “I don’t wanna hear it from you tonight.”

Eleven merely shot her a snooty, pointedly knowing look. It was so fucking condescending that Mandy made an audible sound of offense. 

When they finally reached the dog, it was a little bit of a damper. It still looked like somebody’s pet, not even close to decomposed or skeletal, and both Mandy and Eleven gave mirroring grimaces as they looked down on it.

“Poor doggy,” Eleven stated somberly, and Mandy sighed, cocking her hip while her free hand tried to settle consolingly on Eleven’s shoulder. Her hand simply fell to her side, moving right through Eleven’s phantom form, and Mandy found herself muttering idiotically to herself.

“Oh, that’s right, you’re not here,” She remembered suddenly, and Eleven shot her a flat, scornful look in a wordless reply.

They moved the body, Mandy walking ahead and pointing to a space beside a particularly generous mound of dirt, while Eleven floated the body and all its disassembled parts to its final resting spot, gently settling it into the smoking earth. Both girls looked down on Goldie’s lifeless form, before Mandy was giving a noisy exhale and moving towards the pile of dirt to topple it.

“Wait!” Eleven exclaimed just as Mandy placed her hands against the soil, making Mandy give an exasperated moan as she stood straight and tried wiping off her now muddy hands.

“Well, what now?!” Mandy cried out, waving her grimy hands around as she gesticulated, “This was supposed to be quick with you here, Kid!”

Eleven looked down at the dog, before clasping her hands together respectfully and announcing, “You have to say something before you put the dirt on her.”

Mandy gave pause, her brows scrunching up on her face as she looked down at the dog for a fleeting second and immediately caved, sighing to herself and shifting uneasily on her feet. She placed her hands before her and bowed her head. Nothing came to her, and she felt a little stupid staring at the ground, so that lasted all of three seconds before she gave it up and looked up at the sky, hands on her hips.

“Uh, alright… Goldie—” Mandy began, her voice suddenly sounding drained and feeble to even her own ears, making her give a small sigh as she stared unblinkingly above her. The stars twinkled along a blanket of black, and she thought about all the wondrous and terrifying things she had encountered in the sky. She was in the middle of contemplating the existence of dog-heaven when a certain star caught her attention. It glowed with a very subtle yellow hue, its diamond shape gleaming for a split second, and Mandy stared at it as she continued on solemnly, “You were a good dog. I’ve been to a bunch places in this universe, but never heaven. I don’t know if I’ll end up there, but I’ve heard great things. So, may you find yourself at peace in heaven. Find your own heaven with doggy-bones and squirrels to chase, and whenever your owner dies, may you find him there with you, and may we never fucking meet again. Ever. Okay? That’s it.”

Eleven slumped and shot her a disappointed look, “Mandy.”

“That’s all I have! I don’t know what the hell to say to at some random dog’s grave! _Good luck! Bon Voyage!_ Is that what you want?!” Mandy spread her arms out as she gave Eleven a pleading look, tilting her head back and announcing pitifully, “I don’t know what else to say, Kiddo.”

Eleven turned her gaze away from Mandy to set her soulful eyes on the husk of a dog in the ground, saying quietly to it, “I’m sorry.”

Mandy’s blood froze in her veins as she heard Eleven’s low cooing voice, her heart throbbing painfully in her chest. The words hung poignantly in the air around them, and Mandy found herself feeling strangely chastened all of a sudden. She hadn’t thought to say it, but she understood it. The dog’s last moments were in suffering, and maybe someone should have apologized on behalf of the fucked up world and the shitty circumstances that brought it all on. Eleven gave her a look that had Mandy recalling the way the younger girl apologized after seeing her own horrible memories, and it kind of made her feel a little choked up.

“Sorry, Goldie,” Mandy chimed after, swallowing hard around the lump that formed in her throat as she pushed on, “It was a good life, but I wish it could have been a better end. I’m sorry.”

Eleven nodded to her, and then sent the entire pile of earth onto the dog’s body in one swoop that startled all the sentimental, misty-eyedness out of Mandy. She jerked out of the way from the collapse, coughing away the dust that plumed through the air and covering her face to avoid any kickback spray of dirt getting in her eyes.

“Okay, done,” Eleven stated, patting off her hands as if she actually did anything with them. The kid was unbelievable to Mandy sometimes, honestly.

Mandy gave her a dull look, “Yeah, but what about the other ones?”

And then she waved her hand in the direction of the two wolves she killed in her fight to survive, only for Eleven to give her a scrunched up expression and a shake of her head.

“They’re not dead,” Eleven announced, blatantly confused, and Mandy gaped for a second.

“Um, are you telling me I’ve been giving a goddamn eulogy while those two beasts that just tried to kill me are right there?! _Napping!?!”_ Mandy interrogated in a shrill girlish squeak, looking aghast as she waved her a finger in the direction of the two collapsed animals, “And you just—just, ugh! _Eleven!!”_

Eleven merely shrugged, giving a small bemused smile at Mandy’s outburst, “Sorry.”

Ugh! She was such an annoying twerp! Mandy crossed her arms and pouted at her.

“You don’t sound very sorry!” Mandy stomped a foot into the ground petulantly, accidentally kicking her flashlight and turning her eyes downward to watch it roll through the bramble. Mandy gave an overtaxed sigh, rolling her eyes as she stepped forward to pick up the light.

Eleven perked up before her, and Mandy glanced up, turning her eyes away from the light just as it flickered briefly, before turning off completely. Mandy frowned, looking back down at it, before smacking it and knocking it around in hopes to get it back on. What a piece of shit, honestly. She just bought it, and it couldn’t survive one wild animal attack? Unbelievable. Must have been made in China.

“Someone’s coming,” Eleven declared, before Mandy was being launched back up the steep slope. She slammed into her father’s Ferrari with a grunt, before landing on her ass on the pavement and spotting the shovel flying at her just in time to avoid it. She drew her knees up and rolled to the side, covering her face as the spade rattled to the concrete, and just as she put her arms down, Eleven was before her, hurrying her, “You have to go.”

Mandy rose her brows, staggering to her feet gracelessly as she collected her shit and stumbled to the trunk to dump it back in there. This all felt very disrespectful and sudden, and she kind of wanted to feel a little offended at how much El was rushing to get rid of her. Mandy sort of felt like she was being kicked out of bed.

“Oh, wait, before I go—” Mandy stopped to blurt out before getting in, “There’s this picture I really want you to see, I need to know—“

Eleven cut her off, insisting, “You _need_ to leave.”

Mandy gave her a look, narrowing her eyes in the girl’s direction, before getting a cluster of sounds from her head—the rev of a faraway engine, the clink of a bike chain and the rustle of leaves, and then the crisp crunch of bramble breaking underfoot. Warped, whooshing pictures flew by her eyes, all murky darkness and the back of two heads, one dark and the other with brown curls tucked under a cap. Mandy recognized those heads immediately.

“Ugh, El, your boyfriend? _Again?”_ Mandy grimaced, face scrunching up in distaste, “I can’t seem get away from him today!”

Eleven rose her brows, and the car door swung open on its own before Mandy’s eyes.

“Go. Or you’ll have to explain—“ Eleven gestured to the demolished landscape along the edge of the woods—burnt, overturned logs, tossed debris, and a huge crater she had carved there with her body. 

Mandy felt like she could probably lie her way out it, if she really tried, but then she was seeing through Eleven’s eyes. She saw herself in the younger girl’s vision, looking a survivor of a werewolf attack from a horror movie, one sleeve torn on her arm with the lower part of her pant leg stained red, and the rest of her caked in filth as her hair stuck-up on end, a bushel of leaves and twigs caught in her pony tail. Wow, she looked like a total disaster, Mandy realized. And now that she actually saw herself looking like total shit, she suddenly felt like total shit. 

Mandy sighed, plopping into the driver’s seat and starting up the engine with a turn of the keys, slamming the car door without another word to Eleven. The girl watched her from the side of the roadway, head angled just slightly, and Mandy pulled back onto the road, revving the engine high as she took off. She glanced in her mirror to catch Eleven looking towards the forest, eyeing something she couldn’t see, and Mandy made sure to drive in the pitch black to avoid being spotted, only turning her headlamps on when she was far away from the sight to not be suspicious.

* * *

“What. The. Hell.” Dustin called out as he looked around the sparsely foliated forest, the light of his flashlight tracing the crater of destruction in the earth.

Mike stepped up beside him, jaw hanging, “What the…? Did something… _crash-land?”_

“Holy shit!” Max exclaimed as she stepped into the clearing, recoiling just slightly as her eyes darted over the scene. 

All the trees around her were stripped bare of their greenery and blackened. Crisp leaves covered the ground in a blanket of browns and dull oranges, except for where the earth had been torn open in a sudden, gaping drop-off. Max rose her brows, looking down at the freshly displaced ground mere inches from the toes of her skate sneakers, and following the darkened earth in the pitch of night with her eyes. It stretched at least twenty-feet in both directions across her vision, and she made sure to take a big step back to be a safer distance from the ditch. She was seriously lucky she didn’t fall into it and break a leg, or something.

When Lucas stepped up beside her, Max placed the back of her hand against his chest to stop him, and he still managed to almost trip and fall in from beside her, “Oh, whoa!”

At their collective sounds of bewilderment, Steve Harrington was rushing through the forest with his weapon raised, making it one step out of the dense forest before promptly fall into the anomalous trench with an alarmed squawk, his baseball bat flinging into the air and landing right at Max’s feet. The group of eighth-graders all gave some variation of dry surprise as they looked to one another from around the wrecked clearing.

Dustin walked forward, bucket swinging against his corduroy-clad legs as he kneeled along the ground at the edge of the drop, head poking over the side to call down to Steve’s collapsed form, “You okay, Harrington?”

Steve gave a groan as he sat up and rubbed his lower back, wincing to himself as he squinted up at the four of them, “Jesus Christ, who the hell put this ditch here?”


	20. Manic Monday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Piper needs paying, Mandy Dear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay lol SO i've been sitting on this chap and incubating it for a whole WEEK b/c idek my anxiety has just been crippling tbh lol. i had set a deadline for myself of two/three weeks for posting chaps and I was determined to meet it sOooOOooOO this chap is getting SHIPPED OUT lol 
> 
> also, there are a few new povs in here (hfjehsjfdkh I.E. ELEVEN AND NANCY, AND BITCH, THEY FKIN KILLED ME TBH LIKE I DIDN'T NOTICE HOW LITTLE PERSONALITY NANCY WHEELER HAD UNTIL I HAD TO WRITE FROM HER PERSPECTIVE???) so all in all this whole chap has been a headache and a half and it feels like a million words long but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ it's fine i guess??
> 
> anyway, enough of me lamenting and ranting like a lunatic, lol. I love you guys and I'm so sorry for my erratic posting! <3 
> 
> p.s. Court, ily girl! and I'm sorry i've been a spaz w/ replying lol. I'm in such a weird funk and I don't want to bore you or annoy you??? bdsabjkdbkjasbfjkda i'm so sorry! I'm def gonna reply to you today <3
> 
> also p.p.s. JULES!!! I DID ONE OF THE THINGS, BABE!! lol, you'll see what I mean <3

The pitch of night. The creak of the door jam. Her breaths gusting gently from between her parted lips. The silence rang loudly in her ears as she moved through the murky dimness, until the click of a lamp made her freeze. She stopped on the spot, her whole form illuminated now, shoulders to her ears and one single big toe pressing onto the first step of the staircase. 

From his position sat atop the stairs, her father called down hauntingly, “You’ve been out late, Cupcake.”

Mandy Mueller blinked against the sudden brightness, eyes turning up to shoot her father a dull glare, “Daddy.”

“Have yourself a nice midnight drive?” Her father inquired sardonically as he leaned his elbows onto his knees and looked down at her with a miserably smug expression. He was just so proud of himself for catching her out while she was looking like a Scooby-doo character trying to creep up to her room without waking anyone. Damn. Her dignity was taking a full ass-kicking on this one.

“Oh, yeah, Daddy. Had the time of my life,” She snarked, hoping to at least maintain her unaffected veneer. Her will ended up crumbling after a single beat. Her father’s evil smirk only grew at her words, and Mandy couldn’t help the way her pokerface fell. She gave a grimace, wincing for a blow that hadn’t even been delivered yet.

“I sure hope you did, Sweetheart,” _Uh oh_ , Mandy thought to herself, half panicked and half resigned to her fate, “Because you won’t be having any more of those for a while yet.”

Oh, boo, she thought to herself dryly. Mandy gave a tight exhale, her brows lowering on her face as she shot her father a frosty look. Time to face the music then.

* * *

“Alright, Kid,” Jim Hopper began as he straddled his seat across from Eleven, “We gotta talk about the friends you’ve been making.”

Eleven knew this conversation was coming, and nodded along with the older man.

“The blonde one? With the attitude? Little Miss Sammy Jo Dean?” He nodded at her expectantly, brows raised as he shoved a forkful of food into his mouth, talking as he chewed, “How’d you find her?”

Eleven squinted, head tilting in confusion, “Sammy Jo— _who?_ That’s not her name.”

“Ugh, no, that’s not what I meant,” Hopper sighed, scratching his nose, before waving his fork around in a rowing motion, explaining, “Kid, you’re at home all day, and you’re tellin’ me you’ve never seen Dynasty? She’s a character, blonde hair with crazy—actually, you know what? Never mind, you probably shouldn’t be watching Dynasty anyway.”

Eleven rose her brows, taking a bite of her own breakfast, slowly chewing before asking, “What channel is it on?”

Hopper balked at the innocently posed question, before shooting her a withering look, stabbing his fork into the air before her face, “Oh, no. I don’t think so, Kid. You just keep your nose in your books and never mind all that. Now, let’s get back to the topic at hand: _Blondie._ ”

“Mandy,” Eleven supplied as she swallowed down her food, and Hopper nodded along with her.

“Yeah, her,” He sighed, occupied hand setting down his fork and moving toward his coffee mug. He took a long sip, before continuing, “How long have you known about her? And have you been hiding her from me?”

Eleven shook her head unflinchingly, because, no, she hadn’t _technically_ been hiding Mandy. Hopper never really asked Eleven about any other people like her, but even if he had, she probably still wouldn’t have told him about her, because Mandy wasn’t _like_ her. 

Mandy Mueller complained about school and boys, and spent hours doing her hair and makeup to make herself presentable for when she went out into the world. She wasn’t hiding, not like Eleven or Kali. She hadn’t been born and raised between the same four white walls; she hadn’t sat alone for hours, straining to grasp something just beyond her reach, and she never experienced the dread of the chemical and physical alterations to her body when the results never came. Mandy hadn’t been _made_ —she had merely been birthed of circumstance. She had only a vague grasp of her powers, and she hadn’t even thought much of them before encountering Eleven. So, Eleven surmised, there really would have been no point in telling Hopper about her. It wasn’t as if the government would ever go looking for a normal girl like Mandy Mueller, who wasted away days shopping and dancing along to MTV music videos. So why would Chief of Police Jim Hopper even need to know about her, anyway?

“Hiding?” Eleven questioned, eyes narrowing in Hopper’s direction, “Is someone… _looking_ for her?”

Hopper sighed, running his hands through his hair before leaning his elbows into the chair back he was straddling, “No, Kid. But that’s not the point, and you know it. This girl is gonna draw attention. You’ve seen what she can do, haven’t you? She started a fire last month! People are gonna start sniffing around if she keeps it up, and that’s bad news for the two of us—especially you, ya get it?”

They locked eyes, his heavy gaze settling on Eleven’s own, before she was nodding solemnly as she fumbled out, “I know, but I—I don’t think she can… _control it_ … most of the time.”

Hopper paused, scratching a hand nervously along his scruff as he mulled over her words, “Why do you think that?”

Eleven shrugged, “I don’t think she really knew about most of this stuff, before me.”

“So, you’re telling me that she wasn’t doing all this hokey shit before you?” Hopper asked, and Eleven nodded, so he continued on, “Okay, so what can she do, anyway? Mind reading, teleporting, projecting her consciousness, or whatever—“

Eleven nodded, before she was looking off to the side and biting down on her lip as she thought hard about something. She wasn’t sure if she should even tell him, truly, because she wasn’t sure if Mandy even knew about it herself.

“And… I think…” Eleven began, words slightly stunted as she worried over her next choice of words, “I think she might be like that movie.”

“Movie?” Hopper questioned, brows pinching tight in the middle of his face, “What movie?”

“The one we watched a few weeks ago,” Eleven explained, head tilting as she looked to him and announced plainly, “The one with Indiana Jones.”

Hopper sighed, before announcing drolly, “Kid, how many times do I have to tell you? Dennis Quaid isn’t Harrison Ford.”

“Well, they look alike,” Eleven reasoned, shrugging haplessly, “Aren’t they the brothers?”

“No, El, that’s not them,” Jim replied dryly, taking a noisy sip of coffee before setting it back atop the table, “You’re thinking of Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen. And what the hell do you mean? You’re talking about Dreamscape, right? So, what? She can go into people’s dreams?”

Eleven pursed her lips as her eyes drifted over Hopper’s shoulder, to which Hopper drawled out knowingly, “ _Eleeeeven._ ”

“I think,” Eleven spat out very quickly, looking back to Hopper’s face with a stony expression, “I think she can change the inside of people’s heads.”

Hopper merely rose his brows, silent for a long moment before he was blinking away his mystification and asking slowly, “Like… mind control?”

Eleven stared up at him with a matching set of big brown eyes, shrugging helplessly in his direction, unsure of how to even answer that particular question.

Hopper ran a hand down his face, rubbing his eyes harshly before pushing himself to stand, taking his cup of coffee along with him as he moved towards a particular cabinet in the kitchen, “Alright, I’m gonna need to Irish this coffee before we continue this conversation.”

* * *

“Yeah, her mom is a _fox,_ man—a real life Ellen Griswold. My little brother popped his first boner when saw her, right in the middle of the parking lot and everything.”

Billy took in the information, shooting the boy speaking a set of dubiously knitted eyebrows, “Popped? Like—“

“Like, he got a chub?” Steve Harrington’s voice cut in, before the boy himself was showing up before Billy’s eyes, a matching set of mottled black eyes hidden behind his usual black sunglasses. Harrington placed his hands akimbo, asking with a vague shrug, “Or he actually came in his pants?”

“Both,” The boy answered, and Harrington winced.

“Jesus, bet he hasn’t lived that down.”

Damn, so every- _fucking_ -body knew. Billy tried not to look too insulted that nobody thought to share this information with him, taking a long drag from his cigarette as he leaned back into his car and tucked a hand into his pocket to fight off the painful chill that made its way into his fingers. The Monday morning air was particularly brisk, and even though it wasn’t raining, the wind was sharp and the atmosphere balmy. All in all, it was fucking cold and it sucked, because it was either suffer the goddamn cold or suffer the stank of education. And it was painful enough that those were Billy’s only options, really.

“Ha, I remember that, man! We were freshmen, and your mom had just dropped you off!” Tommy inputted, “Morrow fainted that day, swear to god.”

“No, I didn’t,” Jamie interrupted rudely, appearing with a donut and a coffee, a single strap of his backpack over his shoulder, “Fucking liar.”

“He fell, then,” Tommy amended with a shrug, looking not even slightly putout by being caught lying, “Whatever, same shit.”

“I didn’t fall!” Morrow insisted adamantly.

“Oh, you’ve never fallen, _ever?!_ ” Tommy shot back heatedly, stuffing his hands into his pockets against the cold, “Bullshit, Morrow! Shut the hell up! No one’s talking to you anyway!”

Billy snickered as Jamie Morrow gave Tommy an offended look, before he was stuffing the last of his donut into his mouth and stalking off, “Fuck you, Tommy.”

“Fuck me?” Tommy echoed incredulously as he gestured to himself with a single palm on his chest, “Oh, yeah? Fuck you, too, then!”

“He did faint, by the way,” Another boy he recognized as number three on the team appeared before them, shooting Billy a knowing look, “Not from seeing her mom or anything, though. He collapsed in the bathroom after barfing all morning—must have been nerves over the first day of school, or whatever.”

Tommy snorted, raising his brows knowingly in Billy’s direction as he bounced on his toes, “What’d I say? I said it, didn’t I? He fainted.”

Billy merely shook his head, sending a smirk in Tommy’s direction. God, he was such a dipshit.

“Am I going nuts or is that Mandy Mueller sitting in that bus?” Someone asked from around them, and the entire basketball team perked up, at attention like a unit of hunting dogs. Billy unthinkingly pushed himself off his trunk, flicking his cigarette away as he squinted in the direction of the school bus, eyes scanning each window down the side of it.

Pigtails, ginger, ugly sweater, braceface, pasty, bug-eyed, four-eyes, and then—ahh, _yes._ Billy finally spotted her, hiding behind her expensive black sunglasses with a miserable look on her face. A predatory grin spread across his visage at the same time Tommy’s face lit up with disbelief beside him. Both of them moved without another word, shoulder to shoulder with five more boys trailing behind them.

They stopped at the doors, huddled together as they watched all the little kiddies leave the bus, shooting the large group of boys terrified looks, before glancing back over their shoulders confusedly. One freshman girl stopped to gape in the middle of the rush of students, only to be promptly shoved out of the way by a boy with headgear. Jesus Christ, these kids were savages. And just as he thought that, Billy’s heart fluttered with the greatest joy he had ever known as he realized that Mandy Mueller just spent an entire bus ride with them. 

“Queenie,” Billy began once he spotted her in the archway, cackling alongside Tommy and the rest of his friends from the basketball team as the girl in question unloaded from the yellow school bus, looking deceptively cool in a pair of black sunglasses and a black suede hat, a bunch of freshmen poking their heads around her shoulders as she blocked the exit, “Did you seriously take the bus today? Oh, say it ain’t so, Princess! Ha- _haa!!_ ”

“Hargrove, if you don’t cram it—“ She replied, her voice settled into its usual vaguely annoyed tone while she cocked a hip, placing one arm high as she leaned in the doorway, looking more like a supermodel than she ever had before despite the fact she was currently getting off a fucking school bus alongside kids who hadn’t even reached five-foot yet, “I’m gonna put you on your hands and knees, slap a saddle on you, and whip your ass as I ride you home.”

Her proclamation had all the boys around him bowing over into hysterics as they howled and hooted. He looked around with a smirk, licking at his lips as he turned his attention back onto her.

“Whoo, Mueller! You can ride me home, Honey!” Someone shouted, and she pulled off her sunglasses, tucking them into her pocket as she bounced down the last two steps before landing herself on the pavement. She settled her deceptively vacant gaze on Billy, and he couldn’t help but beam at her in reply, because he just _knew_. He knew she was pissed. He was so fucking sure of it—hadn’t been more sure of anything in his goddamn life.

“Fuck off,” She muttered derisively, rolling her eyes as she tossed her bag over her shoulder.

“Aw, c’mon Mandy!” The same boy called, “I’m just being friendly, Baby!”

“Get friendly with your hand, Dick Wick, ‘cause it ain’t happenin’ with me!” She retorted without missing a beat as she continued to weave through the parking lot away from them. 

The entire group of boys erupted into another round of laughter, before the boy that was just burned was being jostled between them.

“Damn, Stowlski, did you really think that was gonna work?” Tommy asked between his sniggers, and Billy shot the boy an assessing look. Curly brown hair and a square face with a shit-eating grin. Yeah, the guy had no clue just who the hell he was dealing with. He was really out of his league when it came to Mandy Mueller. Stowliski laughed along side the guys around him, accepting the jeers readily, and Billy sighed quietly, turning to watch the back of Mueller’s blonde head bob through the crowd at the school entrance.

Jeremy Stowlski robbed Billy of the perfect chance to get under Queenie’s skin. Damn, and he really had a good line waiting for it, too.

* * *

Mandy Mueller was no stranger to punishment. As a child, the nuns at school would whack kids’ knuckles with rulers, and grab their ears to tug them along to the principle’s office, and in the nuthouse, the nurses would grab patients by the hair or wrench them along by their arms to secret rooms. Mandy herself had been shoved into empty, padded rooms, and dunked head first into ice baths, and buckled down into chairs for a good zapping, and wrapped inside a jacket that left her hugging herself for hours. 

There wasn’t much that could ever make her actually think twice anymore, but somehow, her father had found the _one_ thing that would ever truly hurt her. It wasn’t a good ripping into, or a guilt trip, or even a beating. No, her father was a man of words, and when words didn’t work, he was all vindictive plots and life-ruining retribution. And a clever man of words, who specialized in things like vindictiveness and retribution, would think of something truly terrible for Mandy to have to endure, like, perhaps, _not being able to drive._

Mandy Mueller was actually carless. No more drive-thru lunches, and no more skipping class, and no more mid-day naps, and no more places to hide from all the berating thoughts around her. No more car meant terrible things—like _actually_ having to endure Gym Class. 

It really was ingeniously cruel.

Mandy tugged her clothes off her body as she dressed for class. The minds around her calling to her stark and judging. Everyone had opinions, about how her hips dipped and how her breasts fit in her bra, and Mandy could hear a particular mind settling on her ass as she slipped from her too-tight pants, announcing rather unnecessarily: _She’s flat like a pancake, totally sad. What is there to even look at? What the hell does he even see in her?_

Mandy peeked over her shoulder to shoot the girl a sharp look, and Kim Cane made a point of glaring back, nestled cosily between two more girls who played some kind of sport. What a rotten little troll. Mandy’s eyes narrowed, before she was whipping her head back around and continuing her task with a little bit too much oomph. She made a show of yanking on her shorts with an extra sway in her hips, before popping the elastic waist, and then slipped her shirt on like she was a pornstar on rewind.

If Kim Cane was going to speculate over what Billy Hargrove could have possibly obsessing over, Mandy was going to give her a show. Because, yes, Billy Hargrove was an over-sexed teen boy that could probably get hard just from the Sears catalogue, but he wasn’t wrong to think Mandy was attractive. Mandy Mueller was the full package, _thank you very much_. She had long blonde hair and was always well-dressed, and Kim Cane could eat her black heart out, honestly. Oh, and then kiss Mandy’s flat pancake ass once she was done. Mandy spun around once she was finished dressing, cocking her head and sending Kim Cane a mocking simper as she passed her and her group of friends to exit the locker room.

“Bitch,” Kim hissed at her back.

“Oh, go chase a ball, Cam,” Mandy declared dryly as she passed through the threshold.

So, the start of class was awful, and Mandy was wise enough to not expect anything better for the rest of it. Kim Cane had set a target on Mandy’s head, and she could feel all of the girl’s unreleased tension. Whatever nasty little brew was cooking up inside Kim Cane over Billy Hargrove’s recent abandonment of her was ready to blow at any moment, and it was rapidly approaching boiling over as Billy extended his open arms in Mandy’s direction as she entered the gymnasium to the unwelcoming sound of basketballs pelting the glossy floors.

“Is that who I think it is?” He called from across the enclosed space, laughing a little to himself, “Is that really you, Mueller? Actually gracing us with your presence today, Your Highness?”

Mandy gave a tired sigh as she stopped on spot amongst the throng of girls she had tried to disappear into. Around her, girls dispersed in every direction, departing to go do whatever activity they usually did, some not even bothering to lower their tone as they gossiped over the scene Hargrove was making as he grinned, wiggling his brows and beckoning her towards him all magnanimously. She only curled her lip in reply, before crossing her arms and shooting him a dull, unimpressed look as he closed in on her, basketball under his arm. 

“I thought you usually skipped gym,” Was all Hargrove provided as he met her in the middle of the clustered gymnasium, and Mandy looked around haplessly, only to notice that their little conversation was being studiously watched. It set her teeth on edge, and she pointedly stared straight into Hargrove’s smug little sunshine grin, eyes fixated on his two front teeth as she withheld from wanting to knock them out.

“I do,” She replied, trying not to sound too mopey about it, but judging by the mocking raise of Billy’s eyebrows, he definitely noticed her whiny tone.

“Oh, no, Princess,” He began, his tone so thickly compassionate that it could only ever be a farce, “You sound like you might cry.”

Mandy shot him a tired look as she said from the corner of her mouth, “Yeah, well, if anyone actually tries to make me chase a ball, I just might.”

Her words had him tossing his head back and giving a bark of a laugh, and Mandy merely looked on as he made a spectacle of himself. It wasn’t any mystery as to why Billy Hargrove was putting on a whole show for the whole congregation of teens around them. 

Billy Hargrove and Mandy Mueller spent a majority of Saturday night fighting fights, evading the cops, and making a little jail break, and when Sunday morning came around, they had driven across town together. 

People had actually seen them interacting somewhat civilly, and for Mandy, a girl with little to none attachments and a penchant for running people off one way or another, that was practically courtship. Billy Hargrove had easily realized it, too, much to Mandy’s chagrin. He knew that if he could seem chummy with her, it would probably be a big deal—he would be in possession of the most notoriously wanted girl in school, and he would be, like, _such a major stud_ because of it.

Mandy couldn’t help but scowl. Billy Hargrove was such a fucking user! If he wasn’t humping and dumping girls, he was doing something equally as repugnant. He even had the audacity to delude himself into thinking he was in love with her, and then within the same millisecond thought about using her for clout if he couldn’t end up with her in the long run. What a total troll! He really was the scum of the earth.

“Oh, man, Mueller,” He began, a little breathless and sounding too amused for Mandy’s tastes, before pausing mid-sentence, mouth still pulled into a smirk just as someone was bumping into her shoulder from behind, her whole body jolting in reply. His easy smirk fell from his face as he shot the culprit a nasty look.

The group of girls who banged into Mandy chittered amongst themselves as she reoriented herself, rubbing her shoulder with a sour expression, and Billy made it a point to droll out haughtily, “Jesus, you heifers never heard of personal space? Watch where you’re fucking walking.”

Mandy sputtered slightly, looking between the group of girls and Hargrove with a not-so-subtle look of bewilderment. They all scowled at him, some so much as scoffing in reply, before one holy head of blonde hair was appearing, her tube socks white as Clorox could ever make them and her t-shirt a little too long on her short torso. Kim Cane had decided to make a comeback. Or Cumberly Came, as people were now calling her, thanks to Mandy’s stupid mouth and undeniable influence. 

“Fuck you, Billy,” Kim stated simply, cocking a hip as she settled her arms akimbo, looking all holier than thou, “I hope your tool shrivels up and falls off.”

“Jesus Christ,” He chuckled slightly, not even bothering to look in Mandy’s direction as he gestured to her mildly with a lackluster wave of an upturned palm, “Just quit being a bitch and apologize to her already.”

Mandy rose her brows, crossing her arms as she looked between their heated glares from the sidelines of their staring match, not willing to put herself in the line of fire on this one. 

“I’m not apologizing your new little fuck-me doll,” Kim Cane retorted, shooting a disgusted look in Mandy’s direction, and Mandy had to check behind her to make sure Kim wasn’t referring to somebody over her shoulder. But no, she wasn’t, and Mandy’s confusion was shoved aside by her reactive temperament.

“Excuse you? Whose little _what_ now?!” Mandy asked hotly, fists curling up at her sides, before she was readying to stomp closer and get in her face. Because that was just such bullshit! Mandy couldn’t help that Billy Hargrove was a useless tool who actually liked her, and Kim Cane was totally unjustified in being a bitch about it, honestly! Her jealousy was blinding her, and Mandy planned to remind her just who the hell she was talking to. She jerked her arm up, pointing a finger into Cane’s face as she moved forward, only for an arm to reach out and snag her by the elbow as Hargrove came between the two of them.

“Hey, watch your fucking mouth,” He sneered, tugging Mandy back as she tried to step forward again, and making her shoot him a foul look, including a low set of brows and a deep frown.

Oh, that really wasn’t what Mandy was hoping he would say. Like, she had thought maybe he would have had a quip about Kim being jealous or ugly, or whatever, but instead, he actually was getting riled up and defensive over Kim Cane being rude. God, Mandy wanted to hide her face in her hands and disappear entirely! She actually found herself smack-dab in the middle of a lover’s quarrel between Billy Hargrove and his latest conquest. How majorly horrifying. This was all a total fucking travesty. Billy Hargrove trying to get in the middle of a situation to defuse it was the equivalent of pouring gasoline onto a fire in an attempt to put it out.

Mandy fruitlessly tried to rip her arm out of his larger hold, wiggling and stomping her foot irritatedly. She really didn’t want this to happen like this. She would have preferred some rude comments subtly exchanged between her and Kim in passing, but not, like, a whole ordeal. Not Billy Hargrove being all macho man over her!

“Oh, you are so screwing!” Kim Cane was too bold by far, and Mandy scoffed in reply, rolling her eyes as she yanked her wrist out of Billy’s larger hand.

“Oh, please,” Mandy drawled out, shooting the girl a dimly agitated look, “He fucking wishes. And isn’t it just beside the point? You’ve been dumped, Sweetie. Just go eat some bonbons, listen to Careless Whisper on repeat, and call it a day, huh? No guy wants to put up with some _hanger-on_. I mean, how long has this been going on now? You’re just making yourself look pathetic at this point. I think I almost feel, like, _bad_ for you.”

Kim Cane pursed her lips. She really didn’t have a good comment to reply with, because Mandy’s suggestions actually kind of made sense. It was like the girl knew she was obsessing, but just couldn’t help herself. Billy Hargrove had become a trophy kill in her mind, and now, he had somehow found a way to unmount himself from the wall she displayed him on and managed to slip out from right between her fingertips. It felt like a huge loss in her mind, and Kim Cane _hated_ losing.

A tight, mirthless laugh left her sneering lips, before she was shaking her head, a ponytail of blonde hair swaying behind her, “Nice black eye, Mueller. Call me up when you want me to give you the matching set.” 

At those words, Cane stalked off, her nasty competitive streak still niggling away at her mind as her group of sporty girlfriends followed in her wake, and Mandy immediately turned to Hargrove with a sharp stare.

“Don’t do that again,” Mandy stated coldly, gesturing towards Kim and her lackeys with flamboyant sweeps of her arms to punctuate her point, and Billy rose his brows.

“She was being a bitch to you,” He retorted, his voice void of anything other than frustration. He was already irritated over his toes being stepped on, and now having his attempt at convoluted chivalry thwarted was just another reason to be an insufferable dick.

“Yeah, Fuckstick, I got that,” Mandy groused, rolling her eyes as she continued, “But I don’t give a shit about her, and fighting with her is only going to make her want to show up in my life more than she already does, get it?”

“Fuck that noise,” He insisted, tucking his basketball tightly under his arm as he situated his weight onto one leg, pushing his face down into her personal space and continuing on crisply, “She’s not gonna get away with that shit with me around.”

Mandy blinked into his open gaze, finding it alight with an electrifying blue that had her stilling in place for a moment a little too long. Her breath caught in her lungs, and she found herself feeling flighty, trying to push away the sensations that were overwhelming her. Possessiveness and defensiveness, and Billy Hargrove’s memories pulsating violently behind his eyes—the sight of his silver rings tangling in the golden tresses of her hair, and her hand covering her bloody mouth with a horrified expression, and the purple Chuck Radner’s face turned as she tightened the electrical chord around his neck, and at the end of it all, Steve Harrington’s voice calling scathingly, _“You guys tried to rape her!”_

Ugh. Billy Hargrove thought she needed… _protecting._ His mind was a tangle of frustration and disappointment, and in the darkest parts of his subconscious, something else laid unsuspecting and even more nefarious, making Mandy recoil away from him with a sharp jerk of her neck. 

She felt sick. Overwhelmed by a fluttering pulse and a suddenly heavy set of limbs. 

She didn’t mean to sound as breathless and repulsed as she did when she bit out, “What?”

She could pick up on a slight bit of embarrassment from him at her openly traumatized expression, and could only watch on as he slowly bricked himself off into a mental fortress. He refused to take it back, and refused to acknowledge her blatant confusion at his turn in demeanor, and absolutely refused to feel stupid over the horrified look she was sending him. He decided he would rather be offended than embarrassed over accidentally coming on too strong and putting her off by his obnoxiously possessive behavior. 

He squared his shoulders, settling himself back into his stony stoicism and vague irritation as he shouldered past her, dribbling the ball as he went, tacking on condescendingly, “Just stash the fucking attitude, Princess. You’re wasting your breath. ”

Mandy watched him walk off, her expression settling into blatant bewilderment, before she called at his retreating back, “Jesus H. Christ, what the hell crawled up your ass and died, huh?!”

He merely shot her a furrowed expression from over his shoulder, and Mandy sent him a narrow-eyed look in return, sticking out her tongue in an unattractively childish way that had him smirking begrudgingly, before shaking his head and pointedly turning his face away from her.

Oh, Mandy thought, her mind twining wickedly around her sudden epiphany, hoping to somehow strangle it out of existence. She knew exactly what crawled up Billy Hargrove’s ass, and it was a guilty conscience.

* * *

It was all her fault.

Once upon a time, Barbara Holland had been a redheaded girl with a big heart, and an even bigger mind, and she had been Nancy Wheeler’s best friend. Barbara Holland had been funny and quick-witted, unbroken in spirit and unendingly clever. Nancy’s happiest moments had been spent with her best friend, sitting quietly across from one another as they studied at the library, or sprawled across their beds at home, whispering and sharing now long-forgotten, grade-school secrets. 

They had grown up alongside one another, and faced down the world side by side. They gossiped and sneakily slipped notes through lectures while the rest of their class would toss balled up papers over their heads, and if a day was particularly terrible, they would both skip class, and Barbara would drive them both to 31 Flavors. Barbara and Nancy had been two simple nerds who had managed to find one another in a sea of horrible, snot-nosed kids through some miracle of God. Barbara had been all that kept Nancy sane most days.

Now, though, Barbara was dead. There would be no more study sessions, and no more shared secrets, and no more slipped notes, and no more ice cream trips, and no more _Barb._ And there was no way for Nancy to escape the fact that it was all her fault. Nancy Wheeler was the reason her own best friend was gone forever.

Nancy hadn’t ever known the heaviness of guilt until the day after Steve Harrington’s party, when Barb’s disappearance pressed its heavy foot atop her heart and crushed it. She had held onto hope that day, trying to reason away her wretched worries, but deep down, Nancy had known Barb was already gone for good. She had felt it that following morning, the cold hollowness of dread and the wrongness of the world without her best friend in it.

Taking down the lab had meant to sate her hungry, gnawing guilt. 

It had been a year, and everyone had moved on. They had all _forgotten_ Barbara, and Nancy had found herself terrifyingly following suit. She had forgotten her laugh, and wry smile, and the humored way she’d squint when she was trying and failing to feign seriousness. She had almost forgotten all the things that made Barb _Barb_. She had lost herself in Steve Harrington, escaping from her self-hatred by going to parties and making new friends and engrossing herself in homework, hoping against hope that the feeling knotting around inside her would just go away and free her from its tight, unrelenting grip on her heart.

Steve had been a good distraction, Nancy thought. He had been a perfect boyfriend, caring and compassionate in every regard. Except for Barb. Barbara’s disappearance had been a secret—a secret kept between the two of them alone—something that needed sweeping under the rug and hiding from onlookers. Nancy understood why Steve thought that way, but she wasn’t ever able to accept it for herself.

Steve Harrington hadn’t ever had a friend like Barbara Holland, Nancy knew. Nancy would have entrusted Barb with her live, beating heart. They had been all each other had. They hadn’t been cool, or ostensibly rich, or overtly attractive, or even outgoing, but they had been able to look at each other and see _real_ people. They saw in each other clever minds, and warm hearts, and kind eyes, and hands that were perfect for helping each other up when the world knocked them down. Without one another, they had been lame against the onslaught of the cruel world, but together, with their unbreakable friendship, they had been a fortress that could survive even the most terrible of tragedies. Back then, there was nothing that could have separated them. Except, of course, Steve Harrington, and, unfortunately, death.

Steve didn’t have any Barbs in his life. No kind eyes, or warm hearts, or hands for helping. Instead, he had Tommys and Carols and Mandys—open, waiting palms, and too-sharp smiles, and flat sunglasses over disinterested stares. They showed up for music and alcohol, and hung around to take a dip in the pool afterwards. None of them really cared for Steve, Nancy knew. Certainly not the way he ought to have been cared for. They were kids who had been born hungry, and conniving, and vindictive. They slipped from their mothers’ wombs with sharpened teeth and an appetite for destruction, clawing their way through life like the little monsters they were born to be. They were not kind—not to Steve, or each other. Not to anyone, not even themselves.

So Steve couldn’t understand, and probably never would, and Nancy didn’t really blame him. If his friends went missing, he wouldn’t look for them. Their friendships were all temporal—a mere convenience of status, and timing, and closeness of vicinity. They were friends simply because that was what was most useful at the current moment. Their relationships weren’t meant to last, and they all knew it.

But Nancy wasn’t going to let those facts alone dictate whether or not she went through with her plan. She still took down the lab—without Steve simply because he couldn’t even dream to understand, or keep up with her as she took on this mission. And it had all been meant to make her feel better. Finally free her from the scald of her own fucking malicious, unending torment. It hadn’t, though, not in any way that counted.

Her tears became anger, and her anger became resentment. She drowned in her self-loathing, and her regret, and her should haves. 

Should have stayed with Barb, her terrible mind echoed. She wouldn’t be dead if she had just _stayed._ Of all the memories Nancy had collected of her time with Barbara, the last night of her life was what Nancy could never let go of. The way Nancy had begged her to come to the party so selfishly, even though she didn’t want to, and the way she had sat all alone for most of the time, dejected and uncomfortable, and the way she had grabbed Nancy’s hand for the last time, looking up at her imploringly. 

Nancy could talk forever about what a good friend Barb was, and it wouldn’t matter, because the one fact Nancy would never escape was that she wasn’t. At the end of it all, Nancy Wheeler had abandoned her best friend, Barbara Holland, to go lose her virginity to a boy who really didn’t even _know_ how to love her. At the end of it all, Nancy hadn’t been a good friend at all.

And now, Barb was dead for good, buried in the ground and mourned on a balmy December day, and Nancy realized she couldn’t fix this. She couldn’t apologize, and she couldn’t wish her back. She just had to accept it. She had gotten the people responsible for releasing that monster upon the town, and had gotten Barbara some of the justice she deserved, and that would have to be good enough. There wasn’t anything else she could do for Barb. Not anymore. And she reminded herself of that, everyday as she brushed her teeth upon waking, and at night as she stared up at her ceiling, begging sleep to claim her.

Nancy didn’t know what she had been expecting after it was all said and done, but it hadn’t cured her of the wretched guilt twisting around her insides. At least, she amended, she didn’t cry anymore over it, and she didn’t feel so hollow. And at least, she reminded, she had Jonathan to talk to now. It was better than nothing, Nancy supposed, even if she did kind of hate talking about it now.

So, Nancy thought to herself, it was a big stroke of bad luck for her that people suddenly started caring about Barbara’s death after her funeral had been aired on the news. She could no longer fly under the radar and attempt to disappear into the crowd to find Jonathan with the barrage of back rubs and softly murmured condolences that were coming her way.

Honestly, it was a fucking headache. 

These kids that looked at her with apology in their eyes were the same kids that made light of Barb’s disappearance. They had laughed, and they had joked, and they had mocked—and now, the news was showing footage of Barb’s casket and calling it a great fucking tragedy, and suddenly, it wasn’t funny anymore. Suddenly, people _cared_ , and it was _such total bullshit._

Nancy knew she was bitter, and resentful, and maybe a little, teeny-tiny bit hateful. But these kids had earned her bitterness and her resentment. They were vile, and vapid, and they lived their narrow, myopic lives, completely devoid of any kind of human compassion. They cared about no one and nothing, and even when they placed their masks of sympathy upon their true faces, Nancy would still only see smiling, laughing, careless teens who knew absolutely nothing of loss or death. They were poor pretenders, truly, and Nancy sometimes wondered why they even bothered. These kids had earned her hatred with their feigned concern and their hypocrisy and their small-minded self-centeredness. They _deserved_ to be hated.

A loud crack brought Nancy from her rapidly spiraling thoughts, and she flinched as the teacher in front of the class whacked her desk with a yard stick once again in a futile attempt to reign in the classroom. Nancy tried to reorient herself, taking in her surroundings with ringing ears for a beat, before she was able to finally pull herself up from her deep, despairing thoughts enough to tune back into the boisterous commotion of the teens all around her. Despite the teacher’s attempts to silence them, the unruly science class still continued to throw papers, and pass notes, and near the back of the class, Nancy even heard someone howl with laughter over their senseless conversation, completely unaffected by the loud clap that came from the front of the room.

“You’d best get that scalpel away from that girl’s hair, Young Man!” The teacher bellowed in panic, pointing a finger across the chaotic classroom, and distantly, Nancy heard Mandy Mueller’s voice shriek out.

“What the fuck, Tommy?!” She screeched, belligerent and distinctly indignant, and a roar of masculine laughter met Nancy’s ears. Same bullshit, Nancy thought miserably, just a different day.

It ended up being a very special type of bullshit she had been saddled with that day, though, Nancy realized much later. 

When it was time for lab partners to be called out, Nancy’s name was said just before that of one Billy Hargrove. The boy in question adjusted his jacket as he stood, a few girls in class swooning as he kicked out his chair and swaggered across the room towards her. Nancy couldn’t help the instantaneous way she rolled her eyes. The boy was a microphone of a human being, his presence magnified to an ear-splitting degree. His metalhead music always blared, and his engine always roared, and he had the kind of laugh that Nancy could imagine being featured in her worst nightmares. He was so obviously, painfully egocentric. He lived in a world where he was king, and everyone else was expected to take a knee before his grandeur. 

She had always known she wouldn’t like him, and she knew she was right when he sat across the table from her, looking like the worst combination almighty and uncaring.

“So, Little Miss Perfect,” He began as he leaned back into his seat, his uncomfortably blue eyes deadlocking upon her and his jacket whispering against the wood behind him as he crossed his arms while trying to stare her down to nothing, “We finally meet.”

His tone had been low and ominous, and as Nancy set her gaze upon him with challenge bright in her eyes, warning and danger blatant promise there should he act out, he actually had the audacity to smirk at her. And in that moment, she knew she was going to come to absolutely detest the time they would be spending together on this project. 

Honestly, Nancy thought to herself, if she somehow made it out of this project without a failing grade or a mysteriously murdered lab partner, it would probably be a miracle from God Himself. Sadly, that wasn’t even the most bleak thought of her day.

* * *

Billy Hargrove couldn’t believe his luck.

Jeremy Stowlski had been trailing after Queenie all day, trying to get her to merely breathe in his direction, and it left Billy with very little opportunities to get her attention. 

He had managed to already fuck up an entire conversation with the girl earlier in the day, and had spent his whole lunch trying to spy her furtively from behind a pair of sunglasses as he leaned against the trunk of his car and shoved French fries in his mouth, reliving some of Saturday night and laughing with a handful of boys over all the shit they had managed to get away with. He played it cool, even if it might have been driving him a little insane that he couldn’t find her for a whole hour, and then couldn’t even manage to get a moment to talk to her when he did eventually run into her in between classes, trying to snag her in passing, only to spy Stowlski down the hall, eyes trained on the two of them. She had only shook Billy off, shooting him a mild look of irritation from under her eyelashes, before she was darting around him, Jeremy Stowlski hounding right at her heels as she disappeared from beyond his line of sight.

And now, after a whole day of suffering through a game of cat and mouse with Mueller, Billy had finally managed to get her alone in a serendipitous turn of events.

He had skipped class to chain-smoke on the football field, because, well, he needed some time to think. A lot of bullshit was hanging heavy on his mind. 

First of which was Mandy Mueller herself, and the tragic way his mind had entangled itself within the mystery of Matthew Carmichael and Bradley Tate and whoever the fuck else had attacked her. Billy just wanted someone to tell him the story, to make him feel better, and to just tell him it wasn’t as bad as he thought. That all of Mueller’s mean looks for him were from irritation and not fear, and that he wasn’t just another asshole bothering her in the grand scheme of things. That he wouldn’t be some obstacle in her life she had to hurdle over to get to something better. Because he couldn’t put himself and Bradley Tate into the same category of man—and he didn’t want to believe Mandy did, either.

Second little fucking dilemma was this: Maxine was elusive and sneaky and suspiciously quiet, and Billy was quickly learning that when Max went radio silent, it meant trouble for him. So he determined that he needed to find out just what the fuck she was doing in the middle of the night looking for Steve Harrington.

And that lead him to the boy himself— _Steve Harrington_. Problem numero tres. Steve Harrington was keeping a helluva lot of secrets, it seemed, and Billy was puzzling over how to get him to spill. He had a few ways to go about it: he could simply ask Harrington what was going on, or he could somehow manage to get Harrington to tell by misleading him into thinking that Billy already knew why Max and her geeky friends were at his house on Saturday night. That sounded like an absolute bitch to try and pull off, so Billy came up with one last idea: he could just kick his ass. So simple, and Billy really wanted another chance to kick Harrington’s ass, honestly, so he was leaning into that idea more so than the others. 

Sprawled out on his back with the cold metal of the bleachers beneath him, brows furrowed and cigarette between his lips as his brain chugged out ideas, Mueller found him. Unlike him, she wore no jacket, merely a small sweater to protect her from the nip in the air, and the little cropped knit did so much for her figure that Billy wanted to groan aloud when he spotted her from the corner of his vision. He still had the image of her in her little green gym shorts and her knee-high tube socks in his the back of his mind, his memories replaying her in slow-mo as he recalled the way she had jogged, her blonde ponytail swaying against her back and her breasts bouncing tantalizingly. Ugh, Billy was half-convinced she could walk around in an ugly, brown paper bag and still manage to get his dick half hard. He didn’t know if that made her incredible or him pathetic. 

She paused at the bottom of the bleachers once she spotted him, feet squelching in the damp grass. Quietly, he heard her give a dejected sigh, looking more than ready to turn around to go back where she had initially came from.

Billy lulled his head sideways, propping up a knee and tapping his boot against the metal bench beneath him with a gong before muttering, “Fancy meeting you here.”

Mandy merely huffed, shifting slightly on her feet as she grumbled, “Why are you out here in the cold? It’s looking like it’s gonna rain, y’know.”

Billy merely scoffed out a laugh, holding up his cig emphatically, “Needed some time to think.”

“And smoke,” Mandy added without a beat, sounding petulant as she looked around briefly, “Have you come to your senses then?”

Billy rose his brows vaguely, “What?”

“Have you finally decided to behave yourself?” She reworded, placing her hands on her hips as she looked up at him from the grassy football field, cocking her head just slightly, and Billy merely chuckled languidly, shaking his head slowly, before putting his cigarette back to his lips with a smirk curving at the corner of his lips.

“I don’t ever behave myself,” He muttered coyly, wiggling his brows in her direction, before pulling his cig from his lips and flicking ash from the end, “C’mon, Queenie, you know that.”

She nodded along with his words quietly, looking back out at the football field and towards the school the both of them abandoned for the hour, before sighing despairingly and stomping up the metal stairs towards him, “Ugh, alright, I guess that’s the best I’m gonna get out of you. Scooch over.”

Billy sat up a little confusedly as he watched her oncoming approach, the sight accented by the clang of her heels against the bleachers, “What?”

“I’m sitting with you,” Mandy explained as she stopped below him, shooting him a high-browed look of expectation, “Or do you not want that?”

His brows perked up, and Billy scooted over almost automatically as he gestured to the place he was once splayed across the bench, trying to make sure his tone sounded uninterested and sarcastic enough that his actual excitement over this sudden turn of events wasn’t obvious, “No, sure. It’s your world, Princess, I’m just living in it.”

Mandy snorted at his words as she hiked a leg up to the next step, replying in that impish little voice she took on when she was being playful, “Truer words have never been spoken, My Friend.”

She plopped down beside him, and the scent of her hit him full force. He had noticed the lingering of her perfume in his car the night previous, and it almost made him a little wistful at the time, but dealing with the onslaught of her, blonde hair bright against the graying canvas of winter, and the smell of her sweet perfume through the clarity of the oncoming rain, made him almost feel homesick for a place he wasn’t even sure he’d ever been to before. It was so strange, and he grimaced against the traitorously enamored way his heart yearned for her in the moment, swallowing down his emotions as he took another deep inhale of his cigarette.

She dropped her bag, completely fucking oblivious to the torture he was enduring internally, and began rummaging through it, head dipped low as she peered into the cavernous wreck that was her purse. She was such a slob, and Billy suspected it already, given the state of her car—tapes and papers and money ( _actual cash!_ Billy saw a ten on the floorboards, he swore) strewn everywhere. He hated it, to be frank; he just couldn’t mentally handle seeing such a fucking mess. He briefly wondered how she found anything, ever. If she wasn’t already the girl of his dreams, the fact she was a slob would have definitely turned him off her, but as it stood, he thought it made sense for her personality, and distressingly, he actually kind of fucking liked that. Jesus Christ, he really was in deep.

When she actually procured a box of Cartier brand cigarettes from her bag and they were perfectly pristine, Billy found himself so bewildered that he let out a snigger through his nose, before spluttering around his cigarette momentarily. 

She peered over at him, shaking the carton within her manicured grasp, “What?”

“You’re such a fucking slob. I don’t know how the hell you function through all of your shit,” He hadn’t meant to say it like that, and he let out a breathy chuckle once the words were out, trying not to look too remorseful. He was absolutely expecting an argument, all of it ending with Mueller deciding to storm off once again. That was her MO, after all, and he had already ruffled her feathers earlier in the day when he went in on her.

Against all of his unspoken assumptions, Mandy merely gave an indignant squawk, “Whatever, at least I’m not poor!”

Billy merely snorted in good humor, “All that money and you ain’t got a maid, Queenie?”

“Oh, kiss my ass, Hargrove!” She retorted, tone peppered with begrudging amusement, “You’re such a fucking tool.”

“Big talk from a toolbox,” Billy snarked back, trying to hide his shit-eating grin by taking a particularly long drag of his cigarette. Mandy turned her head in his direction to shoot him a theatrically offended expression.

“Ugh!” She finally exclaimed, ripping open her carton of smokes with much more ferocity than necessary, “Shut up already!”

Billy merely wiggled his brows, leaning towards her and breathing out a long stream of smoke over her head as he whispered conspiratorially, “Ooh, or what?”

Queenie merely sneered, leaning forward until they were only inches apart, before sticking her smoke between her lips and recycling his tone, “Or I’m leaving.”

Billy merely smirked at her, and that was obviously not the reaction she wanted, so she loomed closer to his face, tilting her chin up to press the tip of her cigarette to his as her hooded eyes settled heavily onto his gaze. His lips settled into a straight line, jaw going a little slack as he tried not to break for her, forcing himself to meet her head on, willfully undaunted by her stare. Her breath pressed into his skin with delicious warmth that was so close and so promising that he felt his insides clench hungrily in reply, all his muscles tensing and coiling tight in preparation to spring on her. He fought against the need to feel her beneath his hands, refusing to succumb to a mere mean look and a pretty set of fuck-me eyes.

It probably wasn’t the best course of action, because the longer he stared at her, the more he thought the cold look in her eye might have not been so cold as he initially thought it was, and that stupid idea was making him kind of feel like doing something about it. Just as he was losing a battle against his own lust, falling further into her hypnotic, soul-stealing stare, her crystalline gaze was darting down to the space between their mouths, and she was puffing at her cigarette with a distracted look on her face, effectively ruining the moment he was sure was supposed to be their first shared kiss. 

“Hm,” She leaned away, taking a pull of her smoke before blowing out and waving the wisps away from her face, “Much better.”

Billy took a breath, trying to will himself to be unaffected by how fucking much he had just wanted to kiss her and lay her out flat on the metal bleacher beneath them.

Trying to distract himself by the cresting wave of want inside him, Billy couldn’t help the irritating way he said into the ringing silence, “Loved meeting your mommy this weekend, by the way.”

Mueller’s shoulders sagged, before she was rolling her eyes in his direction, brows raising as she shot him a look from the corner of her gaze, “I’m sure you did, you absolute troll.”

Billy smirked at her dull tone, “Oh, yeah, she was great.”

They lapsed back into silence, and Mueller gave a sigh from beside him, before closing her eyes and taking a puff of her cigarette. He took the moment to study her features—the slope of her nose and the bow of her lips and the way her eyelashes kissed the tops of her wind-reddened cheeks. She was devastatingly attractive, Billy knew, but in the silence it was a unavoidable fact. With nothing else to distract his cacophonous mind, it was almost all he could think about. After a quiet moment of his fixated leering, her eyes slid open again and she glanced over in Billy’s direction. He merely arched his brows, fighting down the strange bite of embarrassment he felt at being caught out staring and not having anything smart to say in his own defense.

“What’s up?” He asked finally, pulling his filter from his lips, stubbing it out and then flicking it away, his eyes following it distractedly to see how far it went, before shifting his attention back onto the girl beside him, “You’re looking like you wanna say something.”

She blinked, slowly, before taking her cig between her pointer and middle finger and turning her shoulders slightly in his direction, “Did Steve Harrington say anything—I don’t know— _weird_ to you this weekend?”

Billy gave pause, brows furrowing, “What?”

Queenie merely cocked her head, shooting him a waspish look as she announced unnecessarily, “That’s not an answer.”

“Well,” He bit out dully, “I don’t really know what the fuck you’re talking about, so—“

“Hm,” She hummed out thoughtfully, turning and bringing her cigarette to her lips again, “I guess I’ll just ask him, then.”

“Jesus,” Billy bit out exasperatedly as he gestured in her direction lazily, “I meant fucking clarify what the hell you’re talking about.”

Clarify it, Billy’s mind begged, because he almost wanted her to bring it up herself. It would have been easier if he didn’t have to ask like some total jackass. He wanted her to just say it offhandedly. _Did Steve Harrington tell you about the time he had to save me from some total shitbags? Is that why you’re acting like a fidgety little pussycat, Billy?_ He kind of wanted her to make a joke, or do that fucking irritating thing she did where she made innuendos and then laughed at them all by herself. Just anything but look at him like she was waiting for him to just ask already. 

She quirked a brow curiously, her gaze meandering over his features for a moment, before she finally announced out of the fucking blue, “Y’know, my dad had Amy Radner sent to a girl’s institution upstate. Kinda sucks she ran me over, I thought she liked me before all of that.”

More like all of _him_ , Billy corrected in the quiet recesses of his mind, and he couldn’t help but say outwardly, “She really didn’t like you all that much.”

Mandy let out a little laugh, nodding to herself, “Yeah, I know. But, like, she didn’t hate me the _most,_ right? Like, her brother _really_ hates me.” She let out a bubble of laughter, continuing with bemusement coloring her tone, “A lot. Chuck Radner has always hated me.”

She shot him a sidelong look, and Billy swallowed down hard on the question that threatened to spill from his lips. She took another puff of her cigarette, breathing smoke out along with her words as she continued, her voice knowing, “This fucking weekend was crazy, man. I cannot believe how much shit I manage to get wrapped up in.”

Billy rose his brows sardonically as he drawled, “Really? Because I can.”

Mandy let out an ugly sound of amusement, her expression warping into bemused surprise as tossed her head back with a cackle, before unleashing a rapid fire of words onto him, “Have you seen Harrington at all? I tried to catch him between classes, and he ran from me. I’m starting to think he’s done something behind my back that I should be angry about.”

Billy merely laughed at her, shooting her a shocked look, because he couldn’t believe it. Mandy Mueller was _actually_ talking to him about something. She had come across him all alone on the bleachers, laying on his back and staring up at a dreary sky, and had actually stopped to come sit with _him_ , to smoke shoulder to shoulder with _him_ , and carry out an almost normal conversation with _him_. He might have to mark this day in his fucking calendar, it was an all-holy fucking miracle.

She continued on, a groan leaving her.

“Ugh, and I can’t do shit about it, because my fucking dad has decided to live up my ass over this weekend,” At her lamenting words, Billy barked out a laugh.

“Yeah, my dad, too,” Billy tacked on easily, resting his elbows into his knees as he slumped over and looked out across the green field before them, mulling over the events of the weekend as well, “He wants my ass served up on a platter.”

Mandy wiggled her shoulder into him, shooting him a taunting smirk when she effectively managed to pull his distant gaze and wandering mind back to her, “I’m sure he’s not the only one, Billy-boy.”

Billy balked at her, before rocking back and letting out a wheezing laugh, “Shut the fuck up. You wouldn’t know what the hell to do with it, Queenie.”

Mandy whipped her head in his direction to gape indignantly, before swatting him in the shoulder, “Ugh! Don’t be such a rude ass!”

He took the hit, laughing even harder, and she pouted, before flicking her half-smoked cigarette in his face. Billy panicked when the bud flashed before his eyes, choking on his laughter slightly as he rushed to clamp him mouth shut so it didn’t fly down his throat, before swatting the air before him and batting the cig from mid-air. 

“What the fuck?! Are you trying to set me on fire!? My house wasn’t enough for you?!!” Billy interrogated accusingly, righting himself by the collar of his jacket and dusting himself in a precautionary measure, and Queenie merely snorted back her laughter, a hand coming up to cover her wicked smile, before she was startling slightly as a drop of water suddenly splatted her face. 

“Oh, no!” She squeaked, tugging her hat down before standing and hefting her bag over her shoulder, “It’s actually raining! Oh, my God! My hair!”

“Hey!” Billy stood up and barked at her back as he watched her bolt, “What about me, Bitch?!”

“Since when have you ever needed an invitation to follow me, Dumbass?!” She called back to him when she finally reached the field, holding her hat onto her head as she loped through the grass, and Billy gave a sigh as he rolled his shoulders and jogged after her.

She did have a good point.

* * *

“Ugh, Jonathan!” Nancy lamented aloud, almost growling over the way the boy beside her tried not to laugh at her dramatics, “He’s so awful! I just don’t get how Tina can think he’s anything but gross! I don’t know how I’m going to survive these next two weeks!”

Jonathan gave a small shrug as he smiled down at her, both of them working their way towards a sparingly populated side-exit of the school, “Look, I get it sucks, Nance, but I hear he’s even worse than you described. Just be happy that he didn’t lash out like some total psycho.”

“Ha!” Nancy gave a mocking laugh as she swung open the door with her back, turning to face her companion, “Give me a break, Byers! You actually think I’m gonna be scared of some macho asshole just because he got into a fight at Steve’s party? Fat chance!”

Jonathan merely smiled, shrugging his hands into his pockets as he followed after her into the brisk winter air, “Listen, I’m not saying—“ 

“Nancy Wheeler,” A voice called as Nancy and Jonathan rounded the bend of the building, making both of them jolt at the sound. Nancy gave an audible yelp as she clutched her bag tightly to her torso, while Jonathan’s shoulders jumped towards his ears, “And Jonathan Byers. We meet again.”

Murray Bauman appeared from seemingly nowhere, and Nancy gave a noisy exhale, muscles uncoiling, “What the _hell_ are you doing here?” 

“Yeah,” Jonathan tacked on curiously, seemingly over being blind-sided, “What happened to ‘may we never meet again’?”

“Well, there’s been something I thought maybe you crazy kids could help me out with,” Bauman announced, looking between the two of them, “And I think you two are going to be very interested in this.”

Nancy and Jonathan shot each other identical high-browed looks from beside one another, before Nancy was inquiring, “Interested in _what_ … exactly?”


	21. I Started A Joke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, it's important to get another perspective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chap title is BIG relevant yall lol 
> 
> ok so first things first: I AM SO SORRY IT TOOK ME THIS LONG TO POST THIS. TToTT real life has just been kicking my ass lately tbh like I was filled with SUCH HUBRIS this summer when i had absolutely no cares in the world and was, like, day drinking by the pool half the day and writing for the other half lmao but now that bitch autumn is here, and she's decided to smack me across the face w/ responsibility and seasonal depression and I barely have any time to write/edit. all of that is gonna be why posts may be sporadic. like, I def am hoping to post at least one chap a month for the coming months (lmao and the fucking holidays are coming too fdhjfdjkbfDSJK FUCK) but if I don't, I'm so sorry. and, on the opposite side of things, if I can get time to finish up chaps, I'll make sure to post them right away! b/c I srsly h8 making you guys wait. It genuinely makes me feel AWFUL to leave any of you hanging b/c you all have been so amazing and supportive of me and this story and the least I can try to do is keep my ass on schedule lol. 
> 
> anyway, now that i've laid all of that on the table, half of this chapter is literally just mandy and el talking w/ one another b/c i just love the two of them together having girl talk tbh (if girl talk is government conspiracies and also monster aliens lmao)
> 
> and as always, you're all so lovely and wonderful and SO PATIENT w/ me and I just don't deserve you u__u <3
> 
> oh, and p.s. here's a triggerwarning: mansplaining happens this chap dfjklfjdakldlajsakl i haven't stopped laughing over it either. when yall read that part, I genuinely hope ur reminded of that "i'm an adult virgin" vine... like pls... it is so important 2 me that you know what I'm talking about so if you haven't seen it (idek how anyone could not know this vine but i won't judge u for it) just click [H E R E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTC4gMxivII) and watch

There was just no way Mandy was going to make it to the end of the week living like this.

Her heeled boots clunked against the pavement, head hanging miserably and her bag flopping against her hip as she marched across the parking lot to a safe haven away from the throngs of teenagers that loitered around the high school building after school. 

She felt so hollow being trapped at school for the entire day—it was taxing, and completely leeched the life out of her, and also made her feel a little hysterical. She had no safe places to hide from people anymore. Loud thoughts, and vivid memories, and bad ideas surrounded her at every turn. She went to the cafeteria and promptly lost her appetite as she caught glimpses of vulgar sex-acts from the hyper-sexual drama dweebs and hateful opinions from totally hypocritical lameasses. It just sucked. She couldn’t even chill out at lunch. There was nowhere to lounge now that it was cold outside, and she had no fucking _car_ to nap in.

Her whole life was imploding. Shit wasn’t going well. Mandy thought she might actually end up killing herself if this shit kept up. She was going to have a big ole whopper of a mental breakdown once she got home, she swore to herself. If she felt like shit about this, her entire family was going to get to feel like shit after hearing her screaming and crying for hours on end.

Her vindictive plotting was cut short as a paper crumpled right under her boot, catching her attention. She stopped on spot, right in the middle of the roadway, looking around for any cars before leaning down and picking it up from the ground.

She flattened it out and flipped it over, noticing the drawing on the other side, before lifting it to her face with a tilt of her head as she inspected it. It was in crayon, but quite well executed nonetheless. Whatever kid made this was actually pretty good, and Mandy found herself nodding as she took in the curves of the female character’s form. Must have been a boy who drew it, she thought to herself, no girl would ever dare to put so much emphasis and detail on crayon boobs. It would have been absurd.

“Oh! Hey—“ The call had Mandy pivoting on her heel and looking over her shoulder at the source of the voice. Behind her stood a small boy with mousy brown hair, face pallid and eyes ringed with shadows from where they sat in their sockets, looking up at her with shock evident on his features. 

Mandy blinked at him, staring into the warm, honeyed hue of his eyes as she tried to get something from his mind to get a vague idea of just who he was. There was just one small problem: in the center of all his thoughts was one enormous chasm. It was a murky abyss—like if someone had torn a hole in the canvas at the drive-ins. Where pictures should have projected, there was just one big tear in the screen. It was so bizarre, because along the edges she could make out incomplete imagery. His mind was functioning, but she just couldn’t see the entire projection of his thoughts. It was like an incomplete puzzle where the only finished parts were the corners.

“U-um,” He faltered, and Mandy blinked away her mystification as she tried to focus back onto the present, even though she still found herself peeking into the back of his cranium to get one whole picture. Just one, and she would be satisfied. She still couldn’t, though, and it was starting to frustrate her.

She really didn’t mean to sound so prickly when she asked, “What? What is it?”

He pointed to the paper in her hands, and Mandy held it up between her fingers as her brows rose, “That’s my, um, picture… In your hand… I just lost it from—“

“Oh,” Mandy chirped, looking at the drawing before looking back to the kid with an impressed look, “You really drew this? She’s majorly hot, man! You’re super good!”

He gave a pinched, discomfited smile, “Oh, uh, thanks. She’s just a random cartoon character.”

“Oh, yeah?” Mandy asked curiously as she cocked her head at him and handed the paper to his fumbling hands, “What’s she from then? Did you draw her from memory?”

“W-what?” The boys blustered, brows raising high on his face, and Mandy mirrored his expression unwittingly as she waited for him to form a coherent reply, “You want to know—? Really? Oh, um, okay. She’s, uh, a bad guy from He-Man.”

“Evil princess?” Mandy inquired, her mind positively desperate at this point. She needed to get something from this weird kid. Something in his head had to have a full picture. He gave her a curious look, and Mandy waved her hand down at the paper as she expanded, “She’s got a crown.”

“Oh, that’s a helmet,” He explained, “She’s Skeletor’s second-in-command.”

_“Oooh,”_ Mandy drawled out understandingly, winking as she teased, “His second-in-command, huh? With a rack like that she can have control of my armies, too.”

The boy snorted at her, before he was reaffirming, “I’m serious. She really is. She’s crazy powerful, and super smart, and wickedly deceptive. I’m pretty sure she could totally take control of Skeletor’s army away from him if she _really_ wanted to.”

“Damn, diabolical,” Mandy conceded, grinning at his passionate insistence as she stuck her hand out in greeting, “Better not mess with her, huh? I’m Mandy, by the way.”

The boy scoffed humoredly to himself as he slid his hand into hers timidly, “Yeah, I know. Like, everyone around here knows who you are.”

The touch did very little for her, except allow her to hear a rush of strangely rumbly static that she hadn’t really noticed before. His mind was so odd—it was like a grassy field that someone dug a fresh pit in the middle of, destroying the greenery and leaving stark dirt in just one spot. She hadn’t ever really seen something like it before. Usually, when people had chasms or voids in their minds, it was, like, bad memories or horrible, festering pits of emotions deep down inside them. His mind was not that, though. It was all functions with one big blackhole smack-dab in the middle of everything. Freaky. Super fucking freaky. Who the hell even was this kid?

“I was being polite,” Mandy announced expectantly, raising her brows in a mildly snooty look, “You were supposed to introduce yourself after I said that.”

“O-oh,” His brows shot up toward his hairline at her words, and Mandy’s brows quirked curiously as she watched him fluster, “I-I, uh, I just—Well, I thought—I guess it doesn’t really matter, I’m, uh—My name’s Will.”

“Will?” Mandy echoed, hoping to get a last name.

“Yeah, uh,” He looked a little bashful as he glanced away briefly, before looking up at her with a pinched expression, “Will Byers, actually.”

_Oh._ Mandy said nothing for a beat, just getting a better look at him now that she recognized the name. He was the kid that went missing a year ago. This somehow managed to complicate things further, because what the fuck? What the hell happened to him that his head was all fucking weird and void? Did it have to do with the disappearance? Or was he weird before all of that drama? Ugh, great, now Mandy had another mystery to fucking solve. As if her own cup wasn’t already overflowing with her own befuddling mystical bullshit. 

She played it cool, “ _Ooh,_ Will Byers. You were once in very high demand, if I recall correctly. Everybody in town was looking for you like you were a goddamn celebrity.”

He gave her a small, awkward smile, “Heh, yeah. That’s me.”

Mandy nodded, watching him with a calculating look, before she was crossing her arms and shifting on her feet restlessly. He looked up at her, before glancing around and then muttering quietly, “It’s okay, you can ask, if you want.”

“Ask what?” She blurted out confusedly, brows furrowing on her face as she gave a little pout.

“Y’know,” He trailed off, giving her a pointed look, “About if I died, or what happened when I disappeared, or whatever.”

Mandy raised her brows, “I wasn’t gonna ask that.”

“Everyone else does,” He retorted, shrugging, and Mandy narrowed her eyes.

“Well, I’m not everyone else,” She declared haughtily, placing a delicate, manicured hand to her chest as she gestured to herself pointedly, “Who even cares if you came back from the dead or not, Kid? Whatever, you’re not special. I’ve survived my fair share of weird shit, too, ya get me?”

He recoiled from Mandy, shooting her a dubious look, “Weirder than living past your own funeral?”

The kid seemed so adamant that that was the most bizarre thing that could ever happen, and it was just so untrue. He seriously had no clue what kinds of fucked up scenarios Mandy was able to find herself in the middle of. Like, literally, she caused one of the biggest forest fires the town had suffered in the past hundred years—and she did that by ripping apart all her atoms and rearranging them by accident. So, boom, there it was. Check-fucking-mate. Mandy was almost ready to burst and say something stupid when another voice interrupted them.

“Will!” Jonathan Byers was appearing out of nowhere, out of breath with a camera swinging against his chest from where it hung around his neck. He placed his hand on his younger brother’s shoulder, settling himself adjacent to Mandy and angling his body defensively before his brother’s smaller form as he looked down to him, asking concernedly, “Are you okay? Is everything alright?”

Will shot a helplessly sheepish expression in Mandy’s direction, looking almost apologetic, “Yeah, fine, Jonathan. We were just talking about, uh, He-Man.”

Jonathan’s eyebrows jumped toward his hairline as he stared down at his brother bewilderedly, before swiveling his head around to give Mandy with a dubious look, “He-Man?”

“Well, Evil-Lyn,” Mandy explained, pantomiming the hat-shape with her palms as she gestured around her head, trying not to be too offended by the distrusting look Byers was settling on her, “The hot bad guy, y’know? She’s got that crazy crown thing on her head? Kinda looks like a crustacean?”

Will snorted in amusement at her explanation, and Jonathan’s expression warped into painfully apparent confusion as he looked between the two of them and echoed, “Evil-Lyn?”

“Yeah,” Will replied, smiling as he looked up at his older brother, “She found my drawing.”

“Yeah, it was pretty good,” Mandy inputted with a flip of her hair and a breezy shrug, “What can I say? I was moved. I had to know his inspiration.”

“Uh, right,” Jonathan Byers looked around them, looking thoroughly disturbed by the entire encounter, and Mandy couldn’t really blame him. She was still fucked up over the big hole in his little brother’s thoughts. He gave her a constipated look, his smile too tight to be anything but awkward as he patted his little brother’s shoulder a little too incessantly without removing his eyes from her form, “We’re, uh, gonna be going now. Have to get home and all, but it was nice talking to you!”

And then he was whisking his little brother off like there was a fucking fire somewhere in the near vicinity, and Mandy watched them go with crossed arms and a truly unsettled feeling digging a pit inside her.

“Y’know, she doesn’t even seem that bad, Jonathan,” Will Byers announced just before they disappeared from sight.

* * *

“Don’t use the Elmo voice, okay? I hate the Elmo voice—“

“Earnie! Ha, ha, ha!”

“God, I hate that fucking voice!”

“Who the hell are these people?” Nancy Wheeler questioned frostily, clutching the strap of her bag and shooting Bauman a dubious look.

“Stu and Earnie,” Murray Bauman explained as he moved to lean against the passenger door of the van, gesturing to the two men huddled in the back surrounded by wires and weird, whining boxes. The two men stood at the sound of their names, a miscellany of metal and plastic dropping from their laps to clatter on the concrete beneath their feet. One donned a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, while the other sported a tragic toupee, and both wore beige pull-ons, baring an uncanny resemblance to the Ghostbusters. 

“Stu Berstein,” Glasses introduced with a wave.

“Earnie Goldberg,” Toupee announced in a nasally voice.

“Are you…” Jonathan trailed off, cocking his head briefly at the sight of the two men in their taupe ensembles. He seemed to forget whatever he had wanted to say, instead openly gaping at them, “ _Uuuhh—_ “

“Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers,” Bauman introduced for them, waving an arm around lackadaisically with a sweeping gesture.

“Hi,” Stu began, his narrow face pulling up into a close-lipped grin, “So, you’re the kids that took down the government facility out here, huh? That’s pretty incredible.”

Earnie snorted from beside his companion, unabashedly assessing them, “These are the kids? Really? I wouldn’t have guessed it, Bauman.”

Nancy scoffed, crossing her arms before her chest defensively as she announced snootily, “Then you’re probably really bad at guessing, Earnie.”

Jonathan chortled at her response, shooting her an amused look at the same moment the man she had spoken to was shooting her a dull glare. 

“Now that all the children are getting along,” Bauman interrupted what would have surely been a landslide into unyielding insult, “Byers, Wheeler—we got a problem. Berstein, explain.”

“Oh, uh, right now?” The man asked, sounding very suddenly his age, which couldn’t have been any more than twenty-five.

“Yes, right now!” Bauman shot back hotly, before giving a noisy exhale and taking off his glasses to wipe them while muttering to himself, “I cannot believe I thought it was a good idea to do this sober. What was I thinking?”

“Hawkins Lab has been officially shut down, but we have reason to believe they’ve been working there off the record,” Stu explained, his voice wavering slightly at all the sudden attention thrust upon him. He adjusted his glasses, and Nancy frowned.

“What? No way,” Nancy replied, voice ringing clear with undeniable disbelief, “They _literally_ just left—“

“And there have been insane spikes in radioactivity around town since then,” Earnie rudely cut in over Nancy’s voice, making her pause and scowl at him.

“Radioactivity?” Jonathan parroted cluelessly, hoping for some kind of explanation, “Like, an atom bomb?”

“Ah,” Earnie nodded, looking almost impressed, “This kid’s got it.”

Stu perked up at Jonathan’s understanding, looking to Nancy as he explained, trying to be helpful, regardless of his blatantly sexist actions, “Radioactivity is when an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by emitting radiation—“

“Okay, yes, that’s all fine, but tell them what that can cause,” Bauman prompted impatiently, waving an arm around in a circular motion to get the ball rolling.

Berstein’s brows went up, before he was listing off drolly, “Well, a ton of things—hair loss, vomitting, nerve damage, headaches—“

“It can kill you!” Bauman finally exclaimed, pointing a single index finger in Nancy’s direction, “It would be a slow and painful and _cruel_ death—“

“And these high spikes of radiation—“ Jonathan began, almost mumbling under all the sudden boisterousness, only to have annoying Earnie and his toupee interrupt again.

“Specifically, radioactive decay,” He inputted, and Jonathan didn’t look put out as he corrected himself instantaneously.

“Radioactive decay,” Jonathan echoed, before looking between the three men before him, “It can do all of this?” 

“Yes, and more,” Stu supplied tactfully, “We’re talking cardiovascular issues, nails falling off, gastrointestinal—“

Nancy waved her hands around to get him to stop, trying to wrap her head around what she was hearing. 

“So,” She began unsurely, before her brows were furrowing as she tried to work through the information being given to her, “What the hell is causing it? The lab?”

Bauman shrugged, “We don’t know for sure. The spikes have been erratic, in town and residential areas and out in the woods, and chasing them down has been a wild goose chase.”

“I think it has something to do with ley lines,” Stu inputted, and Nancy’s gaze darted over to him curiously, unsure if she heard him correctly.

“Ley lines?” She repeated slowly.

“Oh, God! Not this again,” Earnie groaned, rubbing a hand through his five-o-clock shadow, the stubble making an audible scraping sound, “Kid, that’s just mystic bullshit. You and I both know that—“

“Mystic bullshit?” Nancy repeated, her voice harder than before at Goldberg’s instant dismissal of his younger associate, “What the hell are ley lines exactly then?”

Stu seemed excited that somebody was so willing to listen to him, “Ley lines are energetic pathways along the earth. Tons of ancient civilizations are suspected of using them in worship—“

“It’s a bunch of hippy mumbo-jumbo,” Earnie insisted, rolling his eyes, “We’re talking radiation and people dying, Berstein, not about your fairy tale baloney.”

Stu’s face scrunched up into a displeased grimace as he shot the older man an unappreciative look. Nancy looked between the two men, before she was settling her gaze back onto Bauman beside them as they bickered amongst themselves.

“So, you don’t know?” She suggested, and Bauman shrugged.

“Oh, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy,” Bauman drawled out condescendingly, “If I knew what the hell was going on in this town, I wouldn’t be asking you for help, now would I?”

* * *

“Take a look at this!!” Mandy exclaimed as she brandished the crumpled piece of paper, zealously waving it before Eleven’s phantom gaze. 

Eleven rose her brows as she sat crosslegged at the edge of Mandy’s canopy bed, shooting the half-naked girl a confused look, “Are… uh, are we playing a game?”

Mandy groaned from the middle of her room, sporting only an oversized button-up and her underwear, surrounded by probably every article of clothing she had ever worn in her life. The carpeted floor was completely unseen as denim, lace, polyester, suede, and velvet dressed the ground, thrown haphazardly and with very little care.

“No!” Mandy cried, throwing her ripped blazer to the floor along with the rest of her clothes, “C’mon, Doofus! Look at this and tell me what you see— _riiiiight_ —here!”

Mandy’s polished finger pointed in the middle of the page, tapping at a blob of orange that Eleven merely squinted at briefly, before shrugging.

“I don’t know…” Eleven replied unsurely, and Mandy groaned comically, tossing her hair back before kicking over a large pile of clothes, a frilly bra catching on her foot and flinging through the air across the room. Eleven ducked, watching the lacey item soar above her head and land gracelessly on the opposite side of the bed.

“Well, ugh, guess!” Mandy insisted, stomping closer as she waved the paper around with great conviction, “Like, doesn’t it kinda look like—?“

“Fire,” Eleven suggested simply, eyebrows rising as she looked for some kind of affirmation from the older girl. 

“Fire—?” Mandy simply paused, blinking stupidly and gaping for a moment before she was rearing back and flipping the drawing around to eye it scrupulously. _“Fire?”_ She repeated softly for her own ears, eyes glinting in the waning afternoon light as she stared down at the paper, before she was breathing softly to herself, “Oh, my god, it _is_ fire.”

Mandy took the news like a smack to the face. She crumpled up the paper, letting out a disgruntled cry of, “Ugh, I’m so dumb! This whole time I thought they were wings!” Before turning to pelt it out of her bedroom window. The window was so immaculately clean that what Mandy had assumed was open, was in fact closed, and the paper rebounded back into the side of her head. She blustered, before finally exclaiming, “Ow, shit!”

Eleven simply rose her brows curiously, “So… did I win?”

“It wasn’t a game, El!” Mandy announced, gesturing wildly with her over-sized sleeves flapping around.

“Why did you think it was wings?” Eleven asked with a confused grimace, announcing with a little bit too much condescension, “People don’t have wings.”

_“People don’t—?!_ Well, then—!“ Mandy scoffed to herself indignantly as she gestured between the two of them in the room, “People also don’t move things with their mind, or talk to invisible people, El! But look at the two of us!”

Eleven gave a shrug, brows pinching in the middle of her face, “Neither of us have wings.”

Mandy sighed, eyes rolling toward the ceiling, “I know, El. That wasn’t the point.”

“I don’t get it then,” Eleven shrugged, looking to Mandy for explanation.

“Mike Wheeler’s little sister drew that,” Mandy pointed to the ball of paper on the floor with a sigh, “When I was at his house this weekend…”

Eleven squinted, “And it is a picture… _of you_ …?”

It was Mandy’s turn to shrug, “I don’t know. It looked like it, didn’t it?”

The ball of paper moved from the ground, unravelling from itself with little crinkles before it was flat and floating before Eleven’s searing gaze. Her dark molten eyes caught in the light, glowing with an amber radiance as they scoured the crayon drawing, before darting up to Mandy over the top of the page.

“Yes,” Eleven nodded, gaze switching from Mandy to the drawing, “You… In the Upside Down.”

Mandy nodded along emphatically with Eleven’s analysis of the drawing, “Yeah, that’s what I thought—!!”

“You don’t have wings, though—“ Eleven gave paused, her eyes widening before she was shooting Mandy a bewildered look, “Wait… do you?”

Mandy snorted in amusement at the younger girl’s startled look, calling out sarcastically, “No, I haven’t grown them in yet.”

Eleven gasped softly, “What?”

“Wait, no! No, no!” Mandy began to laugh, waving around her arms to still the suddenly chaotic thoughts racing through Eleven’s mind, “I was only kidding! That was a joke, Kiddo.”

“Oh,” Eleven breathed out, wide eyes suddenly suspicious and trained on Mandy, “A joke."

“Yeah,” Mandy explained as she hopped onto her bed beside the disembodied projection, “I was being sarcastic.”

“Sarcastic,” Eleven parroted, head cocking as she mulled over this information.

Mandy smiled at the younger girl, peeking into El’s mind as she catalogued the new information in her mind distractedly. Mandy found it interesting inside her head. Eleven knew a lot of ridiculous things, but she didn’t know about things like irony or comedic timing. She really was like an alien, and Mandy found herself biting her lip to stop herself from laughing as she took in Eleven’s strained expression.

“It’s like—“ Mandy began, hoping to explain to Eleven what the word meant as the girl in question looked over to Mandy expectantly, “People obviously don’t grow wings, right? So, I said that and it was funny because it’s supposed to be so obviously absurd. Most people would know I was being disingenuous.”

Eleven’s brows pinched together, “Disingenuous?”

“Oh, right,” Mandy let out a little laugh, “Like, I was lying. Not being honest. Get it?”

Eleven nodded, before she was biting her lip and wringing her hands together, “Do you think you’ll ever come visit me?”

“Literally, you picked the absolute worst time to ask me to visit,” Mandy explained, giving a sympathetic look to the younger girl as she sighed, “My dad’s got me on crackdown, and I don’t have a car right now.”

Eleven looked down at her lap, fidgeting with her fingers for a moment, before she was looking up tentatively from under her eyelashes and asking meekly, “But… when you’re not on _crack-down_?”

Mandy snorted at Eleven struggling to use her slang, “Sure, Kid, why not? Why do you want me to visit so bad, anyway?”

Eleven shot her a guarded, narrow-eyed look, before she was looking purposefully away, and Mandy rose her brows as she picked up on a distant, alien sensation of embarrassment. 

“Oh, Honey,” Mandy groaned, flopping back onto the bed and tossing the back of her hand against her forehead as she pantomimed woe, “Say it ain’t over a boy!”

“Not just any boy!” Eleven cried out in her own defense, and Mandy moaned, writhing around on her bed and coiling herself up in her floral quilts.

_“Ooh, Mike Wheeler!!”_ Mandy whined, her voice rising an octave as she shrilly imitated a love-sick voice before dropping it for her usual scathing tone, “Yeah, I know! But he’s a dweeb, El, and you’re a total badass. You can’t be embarrassed over Mike Wheeler, Kid! You’re outta his league!”

“I kissed him,” Eleven announced quietly, pulling on one of her short curls, and Mandy promptly fell out of bed in her bewilderment. El acted like she hadn’t even noticed as Mandy was clawing her way back up to her feet from a mass of blankets, “I don’t know what to do.”

“You don’t know what to do?! _What about me!?!”_ Mandy screeched, appearing on the edge of the bed looking disheveled as she shook off the remaining blankets from her form, “Honey, we did not go over macking on Mike Wheeler! We went over dancing and dressing and makeup, but certainly not kissing! I can’t believe this! Does Hopper know?!”

El shot Mandy an unimpressed look, “Macking?”

“Like, making out, or whatever—“

“Making out?”

“Eleven! Stop avoiding the topic!” Mandy shrieked once she realized what the younger girl was doing.

“Why does everyone keep yelling at me? I just wanted to try it! It’s on TV!” El cried out, tossing her arms up, and Mandy then realized that she had probably already gotten a lecture from Hopper at some point over this. Which was perfect, since it meant Mandy didn’t need to give one about the dangers of kissing, and mononucleosis and cold-sores. Awesome, but also—

Mandy gasped, “Was there tongue? You’re only, like, twelve, there better not have been any tongue! I’ll kick his ass!”

“Tongue?” Eleven echoed cluelessly, and Mandy belatedly realized she was giving the younger girl ideas, “I thought you just—“

Eleven puckered her lips and made a pecking motion, before sending Mandy a suspicious look. Mandy felt her sifting through her mind, and screamed, “Hey! Don’t you look through my memories! That’s classified shit in there! Way above your pay grade!”

“You’ve tongue kissed?” Eleven asked, squinting at Mandy skeptically, “A boy?”

Mandy gaped, “I didn’t do it willingly, El! It was gross! And also, I was drunk and caught off guard! That guy just, like, grabbed me and stuck his tongue in my mouth. I almost puked!”

“Hm,” Eleven hummed contemplatively, before she was adding on, “Slimy.”

“I think he had a glandular problem,” Mandy explained miserably, “That, or he was drooling over me. Anyway, it was totally grody, and it won’t ever be happening to me again. Anyone that tries to tongue me will suffer grave consequences.”

“Mouth Breather?” El asked, and Mandy shot her a confused look to which the younger girl expanded, “The _worse-than_ Mouth Breather?”

Mandy froze, “What?”

“You kissed,” El nodded, shooting Mandy a pointed look to which she gasped.

“Ew, El! It wasn’t on purpose! Also, it hardly counts given the circumstances. I wasn’t even in my body, so that’s makes it a mulligan,” Mandy scowled, face scrunching up in disgust as she pointed an accusing finger at the younger girl, “I can’t believe you! Trying to spin all of this around!”

“Mulligan?” Eleven echoed cluelessly, her face scrunching up, and Mandy sighed, tossing her arms up in despair.

“Like, it didn’t count! I don’t know! It’s a golf word, I think!” Mandy explained in a screeching voice, making Eleven nod along with her, face evening out and creases disappearing from between her brows.

“You still liked it,” El continued on snootily, and Mandy made a choked sound of outrage as she blustered over the accusation. 

“Oh, my g— _Eleven!_ I cannot believe you right now! You are so lucky you’re not here physically! I’d kick your scrawny butt for saying that!”

El raised her brows, “You didn’t deny it.”

Mandy scoffed, frowning as she crossed her arms, “I also didn’t agree.”

“You like him,” El blurted out, and Mandy dropped her arms, face suddenly vacant of emotion.

Eleven was being so totally unfair! Billy _fucking_ Hargrove was an irritating boy who would not go away no matter what Mandy did. All her evasive maneuvers and annoying idiosyncrasies she had developed to keep people away just didn’t fucking work on him, and she refused to let him get close. She danced a stupid little dance with him right at the edge of her boundaries, but that did _not_ mean she liked him. It didn’t. Because he was gross, and mean, and just so fucking awful all the time. She refused to like someone like that. It meant shit-all that he sent her secret tapes with his number on them, or stepped into a fight for her, or carried her when her feet hurt, or did stupid shit like think he was in love with her. She just couldn’t like him— _not one single part_ —no matter how much he tried to win her over. 

But for one stupid moment, she might have forgotten all that. She might have thought for one _brief_ moment that stupid Billy Hargrove was actually kind of a nice kisser. Mandy Mueller had kissed about a handful of boys, most not of her own accord, and it had always been gross. Cold fish lips, or sweaty palms, or bad breath, or fucking horrible, terrible, disgusting, despicable thoughts rattling around in her cranium that weren’t her own. And Billy Hargrove wasn’t that, shockingly. For one brief moment as he pressed his lips against hers, his presence was kind of nice. The gentle way he had cradled her face, and the way his fluttering breaths warmed her cheeks, and the breath-catching sensation of his mouth against hers had her so surprised she didn’t even know what to do with herself in the moment. She hadn’t ever been kissed like that before, and it was just so unfair. Even his mind had been a comforting thing, calling to her in a hazy, caramel slur, _“Fuck, she’s everything—so warm and so sweet, and so fucking perfect—“_

She almost forgot herself then, melting and leaning into his touch, because for one _stupid_ second, she thought she might’ve wanted him, too. For once, it didn’t feel like he was trying to take from her. It felt like maybe he just wanted to love her, and it was all very dangerous. So very, _very_ dangerous. She absolutely refused to let him do that. 

El could never understand, Mandy knew. She wouldn’t understand her reasoning. She had herself Mike Wheeler, who couldn’t forget Eleven if he tried—he was a boy who loved with no bounds, and cared without cause, and was the polar opposite of boys like Billy Hargrove. El didn’t understand what it was like to deal with rotten boys like Hargrove.

One kiss did not equate to liking somebody, and some boys really didn’t deserve to be loved in any way, no matter how much they liked Mandy. Mandy would never be desperate enough to fool herself into liking Billy Hargrove. One kiss didn’t really matter at the end of the day, but Eleven was a naive young fool that only just recently escaped her test-tube and just would not be able to grasp that concept.

“Okay, fine, whatever,” Mandy finally sighed out, rolling her eyes at being cornered verbally by a preteen, “But, like, not _that_ much, El.”

Eleven rose her brows, before she was arguing, “More than other boys, though.”

Mandy gave a groan, complaining aloud, “Oh, shut up about him, already! He’s just some boy, El! Do you know how many boys hit on me a day? How many ask for my number? Boys ain’t shit, Honey, I’m telling ya!”

“You were at his house,” El announced, and Mandy gasped indignantly, making her continue on, her voice lilting upward curiously as she clarified, “When you started that fire—”

“No!” Mandy exclaimed petulantly, “I didn’t start that fire! I was just there when it happened, okay?! Now, can we please drop this subject? It’s killing me. I hate talking about Hargrove, being home is the only place I can escape him! And I’ve been dying to ask you about this kid I met today—“

El shot her a curious look, and Mandy shuffled through her memories, showing El flashes of Will Byers’ gaping hole of a mind. El squinted as Mandy fed her the information of the boy’s strange disappearance, and the usual nature of his mind. 

“He was in the Upside Down,” El explained, and Mandy paused in feeding her information.

“What? How do you know that?” Mandy asked, brows furrowed, before El was looking down shamefully.

When the young girl replied, her voice was small, “Because it was my fault.”

Mandy’s face scrunched up at the information, and she focused in on the young girl’s mind, only to find her trying to hide away her memories. It was the first time she had ever experienced something like that, and Mandy found herself asking, “What’s the big deal? What don’t you want me to know, huh?”

Eleven looked up briefly, brows upturned and pinched in the middle of her face as she bit the inside of her cheek, “You’ll be angry, I think.”

“Angry?” Mandy echoed cluelessly, her voice sounding suddenly apprehensive as she began to run through the possibilities in her head. She couldn’t come up with anything that would make sense, though. Only that maybe Eleven transported the kid there by accident, like how she did with the monster—but even that confused Mandy, because just how the hell would that make her angry? Mandy was truly in the dark on this one. Her mind was abuzz with curiosity.

Eleven was looking at her as they sat in silence, her eyes shining bright with worry, before the young girl was looking back down, hiding her eyes behind her shag of brown curls as she fiddled with her fingers in her lap.

“The monster got him,” Eleven explained, her voice strained and her expression hidden.

Mandy rose her brows as her eyes scoured the girl’s form for any kind of insight into what she was getting at. She came up empty handed, sensing only washing nervousness and the cold sting of fear from the younger girl. Mandy found herself cocking her head and leaning forward, staring at Eleven with great intensity.

“Because of you,” Mandy inferred, her voice trained into its usual lull, before she was asking in a light breath, “Right?”

Eleven looked up at her then, enigmatic eyes alight with something Mandy couldn’t name, before she was nodding and looking back down into her lap, “Yes.”

She elucidated no further, and Mandy sighed, before asking, “And then the monster took him… to the Upside Down?”

Eleven nodded, refusing to look up as Mandy tried to work out the whole story in her head. How could this make her angry? She didn’t know the Byers kid. She didn’t even really give a shit about the Byers kid. Why would she even care about any of this, really? What the hell was she missing? 

It was all a huge contrast to the conversation the two of them were having earlier. Eleven kind of loved to bust Mandy’s balls over everything. The kid was snarky, and sarcastic, and fucking quick on the uptake. She wasn’t ever afraid to backtalk or give a little lip with Mandy, regardless of how much Mandy loved to shout and curse. And now, the girl was suddenly a little lamb coming to face a hungry lion, all meek and scared. It almost made Mandy a little bit afraid herself, because she was so lost. What the hell happened with that Byers kid?

“How is that your fault, Eleven?” Mandy inquired quietly, trying to keep the creeping uncertainty from her voice. Eleven didn’t reply, biting her lip and averting her eyes, and Mandy called her again for some kind of reply, “Eleven?”

“I did it,” Eleven answered in a rush, looking up with fear in her eyes as she awaited Mandy’s reply, but all Mandy did was shrug, brows rising high on her face.

“Did what?”

“I-I—“ Eleven stammered, her eyes dancing over Mandy’s face, and Mandy heard her mind call in disjointed fragments: _I’m sorry. I did it—something bad. My fault—Sorry. So, so, so sorry—All my fault._

“What?” Mandy asked again, her eyes narrowing as she locked her gaze onto El’s head, “What did you do?”

“You’ll be angry with me,” Eleven warbled out, her voice trembling and hasty, like she was too afraid to speak for too long, and Mandy said nothing as she continued in a jumble of bumbling words, “I think—I don’t think you’ll—you’ll be angry. You won’t like me, anymore—I think—I did something wrong. It’s my fault, and-and—and you won’t talk to me anymore. You’ll run away again. I-I don’t want you to go away, please.”

Mandy found herself shifting on the bed, the rustle of blankets and sheets suddenly cacophonous to her ears, before she was sitting up on her knees and settling her butt uneasily onto her heels as she stared at Eleven across from her. The girl was sitting before in a pair of ratty hand-me-down overalls and an old athletic t-shirt, feet clad in mismatched socks with no shoes, and Mandy was struck suddenly by how very small she was. The imploring look in her eyes and the helpless way she hung her head reminded Mandy of just how grave her circumstances were. Eleven really was small and helpless—she was dependent on others, and had no true freedom to herself, regardless of how great her skill-set was or how amazingly gifted she was. She was really just a lonely kid at the end of the day, deadly government experiment or not. 

Mandy didn’t know what to say. Was she supposed to lie? Tell the girl that she wouldn’t be angry, and that she’d never leave her? Console her with sweet words and a few omissions? Mandy didn’t know if she had it in her. She valued Eleven. She liked Eleven. Sometimes, when things were particularly confusing or demented, Mandy wished for nothing else but Eleven’s presence. Sometimes, Eleven was the only thing that made any goddamn sense in Mandy’s life, ironically, but still, Mandy didn’t know if she could lie to her. Maybe, Eleven really would piss Mandy off with her next words, and maybe, Mandy would never want to talk to her again. It wasn’t an impossibility.

Eleven was looking at her like she already knew, and a single tear escaped her eye as Mandy stared at her, expression set and sobering. All Mandy could wonder was: What the hell could she have done? What was so bad? 

“So?” Mandy questioned, her voice breaking just slightly as she looked to Eleven’s openly brokenhearted expression, “Say it already.”

“I brought it here,” Eleven answered, voice a desperate hush, and Mandy rose her brows, only for the young girl to expand in a heaving breath, “The monster, Mandy.”

And then the images slammed into her head—the dark room, the static hum of the over-head lights as they shut off one by one, and then the helmet, and the way her body sunk into the tank. Mandy blinked at a familiar sight—an empty void, and then distant, hissed whispers that she followed. Her curiosity led her somewhere very bad, but she had been told—she was supposed to. She was supposed to discover, to look, to find—she just didn’t know. If she had known it would end up in all of this, she would have taken the dark room. The closet. The isolation. Any punishment. She just hadn’t known. It was a mistake. Her mistake. She made first contact, and she brought that monster home with her. She ruined everything. She was the reason Barbara Holland died. The reason Will Byers went missing. The reason Mandy had those nightmares for the past year, and got hurt at night, and thought she was going crazy all over again—

“Oh,” Mandy replied, her voice void of any emotion. So that was why Eleven thought she would be angry with her. 

“I’m sorry,” Eleven said again, her voice small and pleading, “I’m really sorry.”

Was she meant to be angry? Mandy didn’t know. She really didn’t know. She crossed her arms around herself, and rocked herself a little bit as she thought. 

Mandy cleared her throat before she spoke her next words, “So, you made first contact then? In the void?” 

Eleven looked up, nodding solemnly, and Mandy looked toward the window to the slim rays of dwindling sunlight splaying through the distant trees as the sun dipped below the treeline.

“With the storm thing?” Mandy asked, before she was humming and rewording, “Oh, but not the storm—one of its, uh, whatever you call them. Children. Puppets. Foot soldiers. But that’s how it knows about this place, right? How it knows about earth?”

Eleven nodded again, and Mandy continued, “It wants to come here, you know that, right?”

Eleven froze, brows furrowing on her face as she shook her head, “I don’t understand. Are you angry?”

Mandy shook out her head, “Who cares how I feel, Kid? Now, everything makes fucking sense! I just thought—God, I don’t even know—I just thought this was another weird thing I just fell victim to, but it’s been the fucking government making all this weird shit happen!”

“What?” El muttered, face scrunching up in bewilderment.

“El, if it wasn’t you, somebody else would have done it,” Mandy explained vehemently, leaning forward as she insisted, gesturing with a single hand in the younger girl’s direction, “They have been doing this crazy shit for years, you get it? They would have opened up this world to this shit with or without you! I’d bet money that they’ve been doing this shit right under everyone’s noses all over the country. Holy shit, this is why. I didn’t get it before, but this makes sense!”

Eleven’s eyes widened as she looked to Mandy, “What makes sense?”

“The fucking Storm!” Mandy exclaimed, hopping off the bed as she paced the length of her room, “Fuck! This is how it knew so much! I’d bet it had been trying to make contact way before you. The fucking government has been at this shit—looking for ways to one-up the Russians, or whatever. This is why it’s obsessed. It’s decay, destruction, hunger—and Earth has great potential for war and death and suffering already, and it knows it. A whole fucking world already killing itself off before it even has to get here! Ugh, what a total vulture! I cannot believe this, El—!”

And then it hit her. Will Byers and the inky vastness in the middle of his head.

“It’s in Will Byers’ head!!” Mandy exclaimed, spinning around to face Eleven, who merely sat at the edge of the bed, giving her a stupid, wide-eyed stare, “The hole in his head is because of that fucking black-matter alien storm thing!”

“We already got rid of it,” Eleven explained, looking around the room unsurely.

“Uh, what?! What the hell are you talking about?!” Mandy asked sharply, because she just refused to believe that Eleven let her ramble about the end of the world and Will Byers’ demon-fucked brain, while she already knew about all of this. It would have been a humiliating betrayal by all accounts.

Eleven simply nodded, “Will was taken over by the Mind Flayer.”

Mandy sighed impatiently, “What does that even mean, Kid?”

“Like, controlled,” Eleven explained, looking confused by her own words, “Or, um—like that scary movie—“

“Possessed!” Mandy yelled out, pointing to her emphatically, “He was possessed! Right? That’s the word! Like in The Exorcist! How’d you get it out, huh? How come I didn’t know about this?”

Eleven shrugged, “I closed the gate.”

Ugh, this was so frustrating! Mandy felt like she was running herself in circles trying to get to her destination.

“Fuck, El! What the fuck are you saying right now?! So, is that thing out of him, or not?!” Mandy finally exclaimed, waving her hands around wildly as she gesticulated, “He’s got a big damn hole in his head!”

“Yeah! I think!” Eleven replied passionately, looking strangely ruffled by all of Mandy’s floundering.

“Ugh! Fuck! Then what the fuck?! Why is his head all murky?! Why are those alien things still here?!” 

Mandy was gradually settling herself into indignant fury. Because what the fuck?! How was she still on the cusp of trying to figure out the whole situation, while Eleven was talking about all of this like it was already solved?! Mandy was still going through the clues while Eleven was saying, ‘Case closed!’ None of this was making any damn sense.

“I-I don’t know!” Eleven exclaimed helplessly, “I thought—Mike said—and _I don’t know!_ They said they got it out of Will, and then, I was supposed to close the-the—“

Mandy got images, vibrant and painful and pulsating, infiltrating her mind. She could see the rush, and panic, and then the way the fleshy wall slowly withered in on itself, inching closed by Eleven’s insistent perseverance. It was the reason Mandy hadn’t seen her for a week, she realized then. The car accident and subsequent loneliness was because of this whole ordeal. This was what Eleven had been busy with. Jesus Christ, what a headache. 

“Shit,” Mandy stated dully as she plopped back onto her bed, “Shit, shit, shit.”

“It shouldn’t be able to come back,” Eleven explained, voice tight with distress as she tried to placate her older companion, “There’s no gate—“

Mandy shook her head as she sat back up to glance over to Eleven, “No, Kid, it doesn’t need a portal, or gateway, or whatever.”

Eleven gave her a tense look, “What?”

“It doesn’t need a portal,” Mandy repeated, already in the process of thinking something very dangerous, “It’s already been here. It knows where we are. Actually, I think—“

She stopped herself short, before she was asking sharply, “How did it possess Will Byers, again?”

Eleven merely shook her head, obviously having no answer, and Mandy sighed, hanging her head, before she was muttering, “I don’t think it needs a portal, El. I think it just needs a new host.”


	22. Making Science from Coincidence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim Hopper gets to the bottom of things, while everything else just bottoms out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me? LATE??? never. lol but I've made it up to everyone this time!!! this chap is like 15000-ish words??? that's kinda a big deal RIGHT???
> 
> anyway, this chap is packed to the brim w/ easter eggs like there's prob at least three GLARINGLY OBVIOUS ones but I will still prob DIE if anyone spots any of them lol. also, some of the plot seems heavy-handed in this chap to me??? idek. i wanted more mystique but I started writing and was like "¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ guess i'll just make this emo or w/e" so... lmao.... yall have been warned i guess dgfjkfhjkglfgdds
> 
> lol and as usual! thank you all so much for the on going support! <3!! I hope you all like this chap! I've kinda been struggling to balance all the SUDDEN ONSET PLOT w/ all the teenage shenanigans i love so dearly lol so... uh... buckle up, buttercups. this ride gets a lil bumpy lol
> 
> oh! and p.s. if there's any horrific grammar in this just know it is b/c i'm dumb, friends. just like.......... the dumbest sometimes lol

The dark was scary. 

It was human nature to be afraid of the unknown. Even the cavemen had hid themselves in the ground to protect themselves of the great, dark unknown of night. And that was what Will Byers told himself as he spun around, taking in the infinite abyss around him. 

The black he was shrouded in was so pitch it looked velvet—rich and wooly and blacker than the blackest black he had ever seen. It was sprawling, and vast, and as he gazed around, he realized it was empty also. And maybe that thought should have gave him comfort, but really, all he felt from it was a strange, hollow kind of loneliness seating itself deep in the cavern of his chest. He wished for Jonathan then, and his mom, and even Bob, even though Will knew he was dead. Even ghosts made for good company when one was lonely enough, Will reasoned.

The person who appeared before him wasn’t Jonathan, or Mom, or Bob, though. They were a splash of color against the pitch of the unknown, and very much alive before his eyes. Long, golden hair, like that of a beautiful damsel, and the unholy smirk of a much too clever villain waiting for everything to go according to plan. A girl, too old for school yard games and too young for womanhood, appeared like a flash. Her presence crashed down on his mind like the bang of a gong, shaking up his head with a reverberating ring—the blaring, angry sounds of electric guitars, and bright pink everything, and a special, glittery type of fire that fell from the sky. She was Thor, the god of thunder, if he so dared to take the female form—she could call upon forces of nature without so much as a breath, and tear down the stars with her bare hands, pretty and dainty as they were.

“Will Byers,” She spoke, standing tall and luminous before him, “You’ve got a secret, don’t you?”

He struggled for words as he looked up at her. She was familiar, but not. A faraway idea he had in a dream once, but woke to find his mind blank. And she was beautiful. Stupidly, ridiculously beautiful. He choked on his tongue once he opened his mouth to speak, letting out an embarrassing squeak before clamping his mouth shut once again. He flushed, face bright and hot all the way to his ears, and tucked his chin to break eye contact with great humility.

She followed his eyes, cocking her head and bending at the knees as she leaned towards him forebodingly, whispering like the hiss of a venomous snake, “I don’t like when people keep secrets from me.”

Will whimpered, cowing from her looming visage, her eyes alive with vitriol. Around him, dissonant and cacophonous, an eerie howling started, first low and rumbling, until it rose, becoming a shrieking gust that had his hair whipping into his eyes.

“I hate secrets, Will Byers!” She called above the screeching winds, her whole body trembling, “I really fucking hate them!!”

Will couldn’t help himself, looking up at her pathetically as he cupped his hands over his ears against the torrent of chaos bearing down on his senses, “I’m sorry, okay?! I’m sorry! I don’t know what you want! Please, just stop!!”

Her lip curled up in a snarl, and her skin lit up from within like her blood was made of pure lightning. She looked like a storm god, angry and vengeful, and wanting for destruction. She bared her teeth like she was a vicious dog warning of a long-coming bite.

_“Ugh!”_ She growled, her blonde hair whipping around her face as she looked around them at the pitch-black tornado they found themselves encased by, “ _I’m_ not doing this—!”

The wind picked up, and whatever else she was going to say was lost to Will’s ears. He rose his brows, opening his mouth to speak.

“What?!” But she couldn’t hear him, trying to push her hair from her face as she looked around frustratedly at the riotous disquiet all around them. 

“What do you mean?!” Will tried again, squinting against the lashing wind. His eyes watered as he struggled to keep them open, trying to read the girl’s moving lips to make sense of her reply. Her lips moved quickly, and she looked upset as she glared into the velvet black shroud around them, and as she looked back down at him, she grew brighter, the whites of her eyes looking like twin lighthouses in the middle of a storm.

Storm, he remembered then. She was just like Storm, from the X-men! Able to call upon weather was her power! And her eyes even turned white, too. So freaky.

Abruptly, the white-eyed girl looked down at him with crooked, almost confused, smile, and the world returned to its former quiet, empty blackness, the howling wind now gone.

“I don’t control the weather, Doofus. Watch this,” Her voice rang clear, echoing into the cavern of his skull, and like that, Will Byers’ eyes flew open.

He rubbed his eyes and pushed himself into sitting, peering to the clock on the bedside stand that read: 12:54 A.M.

Ugh, Will thought as he squinted at his clock, another weird nightmare. He fell back onto his pillow with a sigh. He hadn’t even made it halfway through the night this time.

* * *

Jim Hopper was a man with his feet firmly planted on the ground. His head had always been too weighed down with things beyond his control to ever consider even looking for answers in the sky. His life had been filled with violence, and bloodshed, and death, and more shitty problems that he felt only _he_ could ever have the answers for. His life on earth had glued him down, and forced his eyes forward. For survival, he had no other options.

But all of that changed with Sara. 

Sara came into his life like the sun rising for the first time. With her, the world opened wide and welcoming, warming him so pleasantly after being trapped in such a cold existence before her. The stars aligned, and the world felt right, and there had never been anything more perfect than his little girl. With Sara, change came, and with it brought a cleansing kind of rain that left no traces of what had come before her. Jim Hopper had forgotten the violence, and the bloodshed, and all the death. His problems withered away and caught the breeze until nothing had been left of them. With Sara, Hopper dared to glance towards the sky and wonder.

Hopper thought maybe things were always meant to play out the way they had, that maybe there had always been a reason that Sara had been so fascinated by the great expanse of the universe and all of the things out of reach to the common man. Maybe, he thought as he sat at his desk that morning, taking a sip of his coffee and contemplating in a stoic silence, he should have been listening more closely to her back then. Maybe some of that would have been of use to him now.

After his daughter’s death, Hopper had buried his head in the sand. It had been too painful to look to the heavens and wonder where she was. Everywhere he looked, he had been able to see her, alive and vibrant and smiling, and it rotted away his brain until reality became merely a hat he had to wear when people glanced his way for too long. Losing her had been a headfirst tumble down a rabbit hole that left his head screaming, and every part of him aching. For a while, he talked to walls, and he smiled sadly into thin air, and the only thing that made it better was the pills that muted his mind and smothered the pain.

It had been a hellish, never-ending merry-go-round of torment. He fell into a ditch of despair, and numbed it away with pills and booze. The ache with no seeming cause had maddened him, and no one could ever understand it, not even his ex. Losing Sara wasn’t _just_ losing a kid, it wasn’t just losing his little girl—it was losing the sun that warmed him and the very air he breathed. The world had become nothing but a pitch black void without her—every breath he took left a lingering pain. His life became nothing more than a bad dream.

The thing that woke him up in the end had been the incident with Hawkins Lab. A mystery hadn’t ever been something to grab him before, but when Joyce Byers had lost her son, Jim had been able to relate. Some part of him then had thought that maybe saving Will would be a way to pay back Sara somehow. He would never have been able to save Sara from her fate, but, he thought a little tearfully, maybe saving Will would be his way of making it up to her. Maybe he could prove to himself that the man he was had been worthy of fathering an incredible little girl like Sara after all.

It was a bit like whiplash. With a snap, his entire life had changed in an instant after saving Will Byers. Finding Eleven, a little lost soul with no one else in the world, had been like finding a kindred spirit. She was a little bit like a fond memory, or a comfortable sweater. She carried a familiarity that compelled him and comforted him, and Hopper knew that he wouldn’t be able to let her go that easy. Just like her, he’d been lost and wandering, with no hope of anyone coming to find him. And saving and caring for her had been a soothing balm to his weathered soul. He got to heal and nurture his mirror image. And just like before, finding Eleven came the promise of things beyond his reach. Just like Sara, this little girl had opened the universe for him, wanting nothing more than to learn and share with him all the things he had never bothered to wonder. 

It felt like there was a pattern forming. It felt like Jim Hopper’s life would keep being brought boons of knowledge in the form of exceptional little girls. Like little hands to help him up over all the obstacles he faced in life.

Except, this time, this one wasn’t so little. 

Mandy Mueller was a little bit too old to be called a girl, and still too young to fill the mold of a woman. She was like him, but in a different way. Not quite so lost and alone, but a little more hotblooded and quick for a fight. She wasn’t the luminous rays of the sun, or the warmth of a comfortable sweater, but rather a wildfire, likely to show up anywhere and almost impossible to control. She was a hot to the touch enigma in the form of a dangerous teenager; Hopper could relate. He had been that way once, too—living fast and sneaking out, feeling mean and acting out. Once upon a time, Hopper might have imagined himself with a troublesome child that took after him, and she might have acted a bit like Blondie herself. Unlike Eleven, Blondie didn’t need a hand to hold or someone to guide her, but she did need some tempering. Someone to help her cool her jets and slow her roll, and pull her head back up from out of her ass and make her get a better look at the world around her. For as outwardly deadheaded as the girl seemed to be at first glance, it was almost offensive that she could hold so much otherworldly knowledge. Like Eleven, she knew of the impossible secrets the universe kept, and was capable of the bizarre and unbelievable. But unlike Eleven, Hopper had actually planned to seek her out and question her about it.

But first, he decided to open the box he was just delivered that morning. 

It was an ugly, brown, half-crumpled thing with a plain, haphazardly written _Mueller, Mandy_ on the crooked, now peeling label. Hopper tossed off the top and peered inside curiously. There were some things he needed to double-check, and he had to get ahold of her records to settle his paranoid mind. After encountering her on Saturday night for the first time, he had laid awake and worried. She seemed to be a completely impossible creature. Mandy Mueller popping up under everyone’s collective noses after all the shit they’d been through this passed year just seemed so improbable. Hopper had, at first, been convinced she was an implant—some undercover agent sent by the government to turn out Eleven and drag her back to another lab—but the longer he chewed on the idea of her, the less that seemed to be. 

The inside of the box was a catastrophe, filled with bulging manilla folders, and scattered with loose papers and a jumble of cassette tapes. 

He reached in for the pile of disordered files, papers fluttering from them helplessly as he lifted them from their ramshackle house. The last thing that clattered from the file had been a laminated little square with the dimly lit face of a little girl, and Hopper picked it up as quick as it fell. 

A small Polaroid of a blonde girl with keen eyes and disheveled, unruly curls laid in his grasp. She looked teary, red-nosed, and frustrated. Definitely post-tantrum, Hopper surmised, and he would have been a fool to think of this child as anyone else than Blondie, but still, he flipped the picture to make sure. On the other side it read starkly: _Mandy Mueller, Dec. 1979._

Five years ago, and it seemed not much had changed. Hopper pursed his lips, and looked into that little girl’s angry eyes one more time before setting down the image carefully and moving on.

Every file was filled with information about her. Born in Queens. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Height. Age. Weight. Her school files were even there, grades and extracurriculars, and special talents that included choir and violin and dance. A showcase of her prowess for the arts, and her struggle with sciences. In those files were pictures of a much different child, so different that Jim had to look twice. Now this, he thought as he gazed into the sweetly smiling child in the photos, was _something_. This made him a little more curious, and as he flipped the picture, he saw a date: _Sept. 1979._

Only a few spare months between the two photos, and she changed into a completely different little girl in that time. What changed, he wondered to himself, to make that sweet smiling little girl into such a lousy teenager? Now he was insanely curious. A need for answers gripped him.

Where did her powers come from? When did they pop up? What the hell was up with all of this hokey shit? Hopper flipped through her school transcripts, finally coming to the final page that abruptly ended with a clipped, _Suspended Indefinitely._ So, she wasn’t expelled from her school, Hopper surmised, but she was still suspended for seemingly forever. Sure, _that_ made sense. Wasn’t suspicious at all. Except it fucking was. It was absolutely fucking suspect. Jim knew there was a story there that he needed to hear. He was almost positive it would have something to do with her psychedelic mind powers. 

Hopper tapped his finger against his desk for a beat, before promptly flipping the folder shut, tossing it aside and mowing onto the next. He opened the next folder, finding most of the type blacked out and omitted from records. The top of the page read the name of the facility in blocked, noble print: _**Pennhurst.**_

Ah, there it was. Jim leaned back in his seat, scratching at his beard as he pondered. Maybe it was a psychotic break, or a freaky telekinetic accident in the middle of school. The possibilities were limitless, really. Or maybe she didn’t even have any powers before being institutionalized, Hopper contemplated. He wasn’t sure which scenario was more horrifying—being thrown in the nuthouse for having crazy powers, or being thrown into the nuthouse only to come out on the other side with crazy powers.

“Jesus, Blondie,” Jim groaned to himself, wiping a hand down his face, “What the hell happened to you, Kid?” 

He really didn’t even need to ask, because he turned the page and read through all the notes. Pills to silence the voices in her head, and electroconvulsive therapy for the mania the pills caused, and hydrotherapy for the catatonia the electroshock caused, and the pills all over again for a new reason. 

It looked like a chore list, Hopper thought rather miserably. Plain, succinct, to the point, and with absolutely no fucking consideration. He continued to read through her medical file, reading doctor’s notes in hasty, scribbled, nearly ineligible writing. It was a hellish circle of probing, breaking, fixing, and finding a new problem to prod at until that was needing fixing, too.

“Prone to violent outbursts,” The chicken-scratch writing read, and Hopper gave a huff of amusement as his eyes continued to scan the line, “Attacked a fellow patient in another manic episode.”

“I worry,” A new handwriting continued on the same line, this one a little less angular and significantly neater, and Jim rose his brows at the use of a word like ‘worry’, “The patient may be getting worse. Showing signs of depressive behavior, loss of time, dazedness, moments of confusion, and fell into what seemed to be an epileptic fit this afternoon. The previously recommended treatment has not produced positive results. Something will have to be done about her rapidly declining condition.”

Jim rose his brows down at the paper, before turning the final page, where it read like a cliche horror movie: _“Operation was a success.”_

Hopper laughed aloud bitterly at the sentence, before flipping the folder shut and leaning back into his seat with a sigh. The chair squeaked underneath him, and he scratched his scruff before lolling his head back and staring up to the ceiling in deep contemplation.

Mandy Mueller was twelve years old when people found out she heard voices in her head, and she was labeled schizophrenic after the first psychiatric visit. She was driven out to the sticks, dropped off at the nuthouse, and they only managed to fuck her up worse. What might have just been regular, run-of-the-mill schizophrenia, turned into freaky mind powers that now involved telepathy and teleportation, and if she had started off telepathic, she was tortured and experimented on for a whole year to no avail. She still read minds, and now she did even weirder shit like astral-project and tele-transport. 

Now it all made sense. The way she had looked at him, watery eyed and small in her seat, begging him not to tell anyone. She didn’t want to be sent back to the loony bin. She saw the opportunity to lie and weasel herself out of institutionalization, and she took it. She was free now, but she would have to spend the rest of her life hiding herself from the world and lying about what she was really capable of. 

Hopper’s brows folded on his face as he stared vacantly up at the ceiling. Now he had to wonder what the hell was on all those tapes. With a second glance into the box, he saw a handful of cassette tapes, and pulled one out, before rooting around in his desk for a cassette player. He found one and had to change the batteries before he was able to fit in the first tape and press play.

It whirred to life as Hopper put the small speaker to his ear and listened carefully. The first sound he heard was breathing, the heavy type. It didn’t bode well to hear something ominous like that at the beginning of a tape, he knew.

“So, Mandy,” A voice droned, so low and calming it was almost hypnotic, “How have you been this week?”

Hopper frowned as a smaller, only vaguely familiar voice replied, “Fine.”

“Just fine?” The first voice prodded, “I heard you made a friend since the last time we spoke. That warrants a different answer than just fine, don’t you think?”

The cold edge the older woman’s voice took on suddenly sparked something to life in Hopper’s brain. He could have sworn he almost recognized that voice, he just couldn’t pinpoint where.

“Why do you do that?” The smaller voice asked, curious with a tinge of frustration. Hopper could hear Blondie’s current tone hiding just beneath the surface on the recording, “You come in here and bait me with questions you already know the answers to. That doesn’t seem like something a therapist is supposed to do.”

The woman’s voice returned, dry and curt, “Have you heard any more voices?”

“Why don’t you tell me? You seem to know everything.” 

Hopper chortled at the snippy retort, leaning back into his seat with his eyes turned towards the heavens as he listened to the humdrum conversation continue.

“I want to hear from you. I can read a million notes, Mandy, but only you can tell me your side of the story,” The woman replied, her voice carrying an undertone of condescending impatience. When no reply came, the woman continued, prompting unsubtly, “So, you are still under the impression you can read people’s minds. Tell me the kinds of things you hear.”

There was a stagnating pause, and only a hissing silence filled the recording. Hopper had just begun to think the recording ended, when a dangerously soft voice came through, “Dr. Frazier, I think I can only hear the sound of my own mind rotting away in this shithole. I hear the clocks fucking chime, and nurses’ keys jingle, and then I come in here, and I listen to you lead me around in circles for a full hour. It’s not fair the have to hear all the time I’m missing out on, and have to hear the sound of the one thing that could ever free me from this place, and then after all of that, have to come these appointments and listen to you try to incriminate me to keep me prisoner in this place.”

Hopper sighed in the breath it took the therapist to reply, “I think you sound very upset, Miss Mueller. Perhaps you need some rest.”

With a hard swallow, Hopper clicked off the tape, lost in thought for a moment. The woman’s voice had sounded so familiar, and even that name rang a bell. Hopper tapped the tape recorded to his chin in thought. 

All that trouble to get some answers, and Jim Hopper just managed to find himself more questions.

He sat up and moved to grab another tape when he spotted it amongst the dust, and miscellaneous clutter, and stray pieces of paper. 

“Flo?” Hopper called distractedly to the woman at the front desk as he stared down at the rectangle of plastic.

A voice called back distantly, “Yes?”

“Yeah, hey, do we have a VCR around here?”

* * *

Unknowns were a great inconvenience. 

Mandy Mueller just wanted answers. She had broken the bounds of space and time, and traveled to millions of far away, almost unfathomable places, but this was just… beyond her.

Of all the planets, and all the galaxies, and all the impossibilities she had bore witness to, it amounted to nothing when it came to looking within the human consciousness. Man wanted to claim the cosmos as the last frontier, but Mandy knew better. The night sky swam with galaxies, and universes, and stars, and planets—but those, though far away, were physical. They were solids, liquids, gases. Man had encountered all of those before—maybe not in the fantastic ways that space provided, but still. They weren’t new concepts. Not like the greyscale of the human mind, anyway.

The human mind was where god lived. It was an elusive nirvana, and also the clearest, most vivid hell. It could be anything. Shining hills of gold, or a dark canopy of spindly branches. Green valleys sparsely speckled with the most vibrantly violet flowers, or an endless sea of bright cerulean that caught the sun like liquid platinum. It could be a sky, wide and open, painted with pearlescent streaks of shimmering light and glowing, billowing clouds. It could even be nothing at all, merely a black abyss filled with nothing more than empty, filmy spider webs and more questions. 

And that was the trouble. The human mind was limitless. It could weave great tales and birth the most nefarious lies. It could fool, and deceive, and hide the biggest and baddest of monsters in plain sight, dressing them up with any face imaginable.

The possibilities were infinite, and it was maddening. Every single consciousness was a different beast, and a new realm that needed conquering, and Mandy had always struggled to navigate through it all. 

So, Will Byers’ mind shouldn’t have grated on her the way it did. There were an infinite amount of possibilities to the human mind, but somehow, that black void in his mind still haunted her with its blatant unnaturalness. When she closed her eyes, she could almost see it still, that big, black stain, and the inky, smudged edges that bled into the crisp imagery of his thoughts. It was a rat that was chomping away at her useless cheddar cheese brain, and she _really_ didn’t want to think about it any more. 

But she did. She did, _a lot._

In Mandy Mueller’s mind, the dots were connecting like the crooked lines that pieced together the picture of Orion in the sky. The picture she got was skewed, flat and stiff, but it got the point across, even as vague and ambitious as it was.

The Storm was a web that stretched across Hawkins. It had been engaged by Eleven. It had met Mandy in the vale between the physical and the beyond, a cloud of dark promise and mal-intent. It had buried itself within Will Byers head like an earwig, niggling and seating itself deep in his skull. It somehow even drew Billy Hargrove down into its upside down world for some unknown, diabolical reason. And somewhere among of all of these disconnected events, Mandy had found herself with a single conclusion: It was coming back. One way, or another. If it wasn’t Will Byers, it would be another—maybe even Billy Hargrove.

Mandy sighed as she clicked her pen against the desktop in an incessant, agitated pattern. Her stress was making her antsy, and fidgety, and all she wanted was to push so hard on the end of her pen that the ball point shot out like a squid inking in its fight or flight. She felt pent-up.

“Jesus,” Billy Hargrove’s call echoed through the back of her skull, “Can you give it a rest already? That is driving me nuts.”

Mandy glanced back, clicking her pen closed one last time as she shot him a pointedly snooty look from over her shoulder, “Well, since you asked so nicely.”

He shot her a mockingly gracious smile in return. Rude ass.

Mandy frowned as she spun back around, staring up at the slowly ticking clock high on the wall. Actually, now that she got a chance to think about it a little longer, she changed her mind. The Storm could go nuts and earwig its way right into Billy Hargrove’s rotten head at this point. It’d probably have better fucking manners, anyway.

* * *

Mandy Mueller was acting… _weird._ And, like, not the fun kind of weird, either.

The girl had gone from her usual bitchy demeanor to being a little bit more reserved, and Billy couldn’t seem to spot the cause of it. He tried to entice any kind of reaction from her all day, and all he got for his efforts were quick quips and subdued, vaguely prickly glances. She seemed a little bit damper in spirits than usual, her gaze far away and her mouth set with a downward slant, and Billy couldn’t seem to pull her from it, no matter what he did. So, he did what he usually did when faced with problems he had no clue how to solve: He focused on something else.

This time, something else was a girl named Tina, who had a head of wild curls and a wicked kind of smile that promised the most debauched kind of fun. She was a little bit Kelly LeBrock if he got her from the right side, and a little bit Betsy Russell if her got her from the left. She drove her red little convertible, and she bit her lip at him whenever she thought he wasn’t looking. She was ripe, and fine, and wanted him _so_ bad. 

It was easy to get lost in her, and that must have been how Mandy snuck up on him like she did. 

After spending an obscene amount of time ribbing Mueller and trying to rile her to no avail, Billy had totally given up and decided to allow Tina to haunt his arm for the rest of the day. They had been at his locker, in the middle of talking about the newest movies in cinema, speculating on whether or not Nightmare on Elm Street was worth all the fuss people were kicking up about it, when Mueller appeared from behind his open locker door, face mere inches from his ear when she spoke quietly.

“What the hell is all of that about?” At the soft gust of breath that fanned over his cheek, he startled, whipping his head around so violently is earring gave a jingle.

“Oh, hey, Mandy,” Tina waved from his other shoulder, smiling to the newly appeared blonde, who merely gave a distracted smile in return. Billy swung his head around between the two girls, brow folding in a look of blatant confusion.

“What?” He asked, narrowing his eyes in Mueller’s direction, “What the hell are you talking about?”

Mandy rose her brows, nodding her head emphatically over his shoulder, and Billy turned his head obediently, following the line of her gaze to find Nancy Wheeler across the hall, her arms full of various wires and blipping boxes. Billy rose his brows, glancing to Tina on the other side of him, who shifted slightly to watch along with them. Nancy Wheeler walked to an unmarked door, struggling to open it for a moment, too overwhelmed with the technology in her arms to properly turn the doorknob, before the door was opening to reveal Jonathan Byers on the other side, who smiled as he rushed to assist her with her load.

“Hm,” Billy hummed out curiously, and Queenie’s gaze turned back on him at the sound, jumping across his features in a skimming glances, before they finally settled on his eyes. He tried to blink away the clarity of her gaze, his brows furrowing as he looked back to the door Wheeler disappeared behind, “No fucking clue. Wheeler’s fucking neurotic, anyhow.”

Mueller snorted slightly in reply to his words, and when they both settled into a contemplative silence over the sight they had just witnessed, Tina was intervening helpfully.

“Oh,” She perked up, clenching her trapper keeper to her chest as she looked between Billy and Mandy respectively, “You guys didn’t hear? Nancy’s starting an Environmental Club.”

Mandy’s eyes squinted in Tina’s direction, “A what now?”

Tina waved a hand around as she expanded, “Like, a club to save the environment. Apparently, after Barbara Holland’s death, she thinks it’s important that we, like, make sure the environment isn’t polluted with nuclear waste, or whatever, by the government.”

“Oh, okay,” Billy chuckled, crossing his arms as he leaned back into the line of lockers behind him, “So she’s definitely gone off the deep end, then.”

“Well, her friend did die,” Tina explained succinctly, shooting him an expectant, high-browed look, “You can’t just expect her to be alright after that, can you?”

It was Mandy’s turn to hum, eyes squeezing into suspicious slits as she stared at the door Wheeler disappeared behind. Billy glanced at her surreptitiously, almost certain she was having a profound thought cresting within her mind, “So what’s with all the machines?”

Billy turned his neck like a rubberband in Tina’s direction as he, too, awaited the answer to that. He was fairly certain most environmentalists were pot-smoking, tree-hugging hippie-types, and he couldn’t seem to fit those cheap, black plastic boxes that beeped in synthesized tones anywhere into the images his mind was birthing.

“Not sure,” Tina shrugged, and Billy’s interested soddened at that. Of course. Tina had to have the answers to all the questions nobody asked, but never the ones he wanted to hear. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Ask Wheeler once science rolled around later in the day? Like hell. Talking to the girl was the equivalent of taking an enema. The amount of shit he put up with when it came to her was just painful and unnatural.

Tina seemed to notice his disappointment, or at least his lost interest, because she was quick to add, “But I can ask her, if you guys want.”

Mandy shot her an unimpressed look, eyes returning to the dull gloom they had been for the entirety of the day, “No. I don’t really care, anyway.”

Tina didn’t seem too interested in Mueller’s lazy dismissal, and instead locked her bright eyes on him, curious and expectant like a dog waiting to be tossed a bone.

“Nah,” He finally drawled, tucking his hands in his pockets, before he was glancing back to Mandy, “What class are you headed to, anyway?”

Mandy rolled her eyes, “Doesn’t matter, I’m skipping.”

Billy rose his brows saucily, wiggling them in hopes to get a reaction from her, “Ooh, skipping? That’s very naughty of you.”

“Thank you for noticing,” She sniffed haughtily, sticking her nose in the air theatrically, before spinning around and strutting off the way she came as he and Tina watched on, too bewildered by her abrupt departure to do much else but gape stupidly.

He shook his head as he watched her back, eyes drawn to the sway of her hips, before they drifted up to the back of her golden head, watching her curls bounce as she tossed her hair from her face and disappeared into the crowd like a phantom. He blinked away his mystification, before looking back to Tina with a look of trained indifference, nodding vaguely in the direction Mueller went.

“So, are you two friends, or something?”

Tina rose her brows in return, “Are _you?_ ”

* * *

“No—! There’ s no way, Lucas!” Mike Wheeler exclaimed as The Party convened around a Donkey Kong machine, “Star Wars doesn’t happen in the future! It happens in the past, obviously! _‘A long time ago… a galaxy far, far away’_ —uh, duh?!”

Will and Dustin stood on opposing sides of the huddle, nodding along to the boys conflicting arguments, while Max stood a little outside of the group, looking on with vague disgruntlement. Boys just loved to argue over the dumbest things, and Max could probably lament forever over all the inane discourse the male species entangled her in. With a roll of her eyes, Max glanced over to the in-use Dig Dug machine wistfully. Oh, to be anywhere, but here, Max thought with a theatrical amount of woe, surrounded by a bunch of rowdy dweebs.

“Well, technically,” Dustin inputted, looking between Lucas and Mike on either side of him, “You both could be right. Let’s say the happenstance of Star Wars takes place some light years away—if that were true, _‘a long time ago… a galaxy far, far away’_ is all relative. Is a long time ago in reference to our perception of time, or another planet’s? Or universe, even?! There’s no way to know for sure.”

“Are you trying to say we’re both wrong?” Lucas snapped back, whipping his head in Dustin’s direction as Dustin held his hands up defensively, “We can’t both be wrong, Dustin!”

“No,” Will asserted, brows knitting as he shook his head, “He’s saying, that in your own ways, you’re both right. Both sides of the argument are valid.”

Mike’s expression loosened as he looked towards Will, before he was shrugging slightly, “Yeah, that’s nice and all, but Lucas is still totally reaching.”

“I’m not reaching!” Lucas exclaimed, throwing his hands up, “They have swords that light up! If that’s not the future, then I don’t know what is!”

Max rolled her eyes as both boys fell back into the same circular argument. They debated Star Wars for another five minutes, before Max was ready to have a say in the matter. Somehow, she managed to make friends with the dumbest nerds she had ever met. They talked about outer space, and theorized over the anatomy of hypothetical bipedal amphibians, and still managed to be wrong about everything. Max wasn’t even sure how it was possible. They knew so much, and still sounded so… _stupid._ It was kind of incredible.

“You’re both wrong,” Max said finally, and both boys jolted from their heated staring match, the flow of words brooking off into a quiet trickle. Dustin gasped audibly, and Wheeler turned to give Max a narrow-eyed look that told her he was definitely ready to disprove her bold statement. It wasn’t going to happen, though. Not on her watch. She was not planning to argue over Star Wars for the next hour. That would be undeniably lame, and Max was anything but lame. So, with a daring look, Max continued succinctly, “Star Wars isn’t real, so it doesn’t even take place along a timeline. It is neither in the past, nor the future.”

Dustin ooh’d, looking antsy where he stood, Mike and Lucas at either shoulder, and as he was looking expectantly between the two boys, they both gave eerily similar cries of outrage. Max merely smirked haughtily as they both simultaneously launched into a _‘you’re a gross, dumb girl, what do you know anyway’_ speech. Or maybe that was just Mike, Max amended, unsure of who was saying what at that point as everyone’s voices competed to be the loudest.

Will Byers, a boy braver than Max gave him credit for, announced levelly from under the yelling match, “I agree. Star Wars is timeless.”

Max laughed a little disbelievingly as her ears caught his words, raising her brows and shooting him a particular look that was both bewildered and amused in equal measure. Will’s lips quirked into a crooked, closed-lipped smirk as he caught her gaze, shrugging in her direction plainly.

“Alright, alright!” Dustin tried to call over the commotion, “Geez, you guys! That’s enough—!”

A head poked over the machine behind Mike’s head of black hair, before a lithe body was slipping onto the scene, leaning against the machine with an arm propped up on the top.

“I knew all this noise had to be you guys,” Steve Harrington shook his head slightly as he languidly pulled off his sunglasses, “You twerps sure are loud. Sounds like a whole goddamn army of ya from the other side of these machines.”

Mike and Lucas broke from their bickering to turn their heads in Steve’s direction, while Dustin greeted sunnily, thrusting a hand in the air to wave from all of ten feet away, “Oh, hey, Steve! You’re early, Dude!”

“Yeah, well,” Steve shrugged, looking a little uncomfortable as he looked off to his right, replying somewhat sheepishly, “I came straight from practice, so…”

Dustin nodded along with his explanation serenely, and Max couldn’t help but worry slightly over Billy going straight to the Wheelers’ house after getting freed from basketball practice. She knew he planned to pick her up at six, but Max could never be too sure with Billy. Her stepbrother truly lived by his own set of rules, and though it was highly unlikely he would ever want to have to spend more time with her than strictly necessary, if Billy felt the itch, he could easily decide to drop by the Wheeler residence an hour early. And that would definitely be a problem, because Max was not at the Wheeler house. She was at the arcade, meeting up with Steve Harrington so The Party could go search the woods for the evil, demonic, alien dog that Dustin unwittingly loosed upon Hawkins. 

Ugh, Max sulked in her mind. If Billy found out she escaped the Wheeler house, she was dead meat. She could only hope he was as selfish and reckless as usual, and stuck to his usual modus operandi, being late to pick her up.

Still, all hope cast wayside, Max asked suspiciously, “Was Billy still there when you left?”

Harrington rose his brows at her prickly tone, his reply oozing with his uncertainly, “ _Uuhhh… yeeeah_ , I think so. He was messing around with Tommy and some other guys when I left, so…”

He left the last part of his statement unspoken, shrugging as if that was enough of an explanation, and Max couldn’t help but roll her eyes.

“Did he say where he was going after practice?” All the boys around her shot her varying looks of confusion and dubiousness, and Max was in complete disbelief. They all saw Billy in action, and they all knew that they had managed to encounter him in the one place hey never should have—Steve Harrington’s house—and _still!_ They _still_ looked at her like she was some paranoid weirdo for needing to know where her psycho stepbrother was! Max was endlessly disappointed by boys’ collective short-term memory-loss.

Dustin made a scoffing sound, “Why would Steve know that? He doesn’t talk to your disgusting stepbrother, Max. He’s way too cool.”

Steve flustered slightly under Dustin’s outburst on his behalf, before placing his hands on his hips as he shifted in place, “Yeah—uh, well—I don’t know, sorry. We’re not really, like, _friends_ , or whatever. He’s kinda a dick, y’know?”

Max couldn’t help but bite out sarcastically, “No kidding.”

Steve didn’t seemed at all phased by her acerbic reply, nodding and tacking on with what Max could have sworn was a sympathy laden tone, “Yeah, Dude. Sorry, but he just sucks.”

“Swallows, too,” Max quipped back, and Lucas and Dustin ooh’d over her reply, high-fiving each other behind her head.

“Ooh, nice!” Lucas exclaimed.

“A critical burn!” Dustin’s voice followed behind excitedly, and Mike rolled is eyes at the three of them.

“You’re all so gross,” Mike announced plainly, shooting them a mildly disgusted look, “I don’t even know why I’m friends with you anymore. I mean, Will’s the only one here who isn’t totally childish—“

A honking sounded from outside, interrupting Mike’s whiny diatribe, and Max chuckled at the sullen expression on his face as Steve Harrington’s taller frame peeked over the arcade machines, peering out of the reflective glass panes, before looking back down at their group to announce, “Uh—hey, Buddy, looks like your brother’s here.”

Will perked up, bending to pick his bag up from the ground, before he was moving towards the exit, calling above Mike’s bemoaning over being abandoned, “Bye, guys! Make sure to call me to tell me how the search goes! See ya tomorrow!”

Max, Lucas, and Dustin waved him off amiably, while Mike sulked like a crybaby, and once they were all done with their goodbyes, Steve took charge, fists propped up on his hips as he looked to them severely.

“Alright, you little shits,” He stated gravely, looking to all of them with a severe expression, “Fun’s over. We gotta find this ugly monster dog—“

“Demo-dog,” Dustin supplied quickly, and Steve sighed slightly at being derailed.

“We gotta find this demo-dog,” Steve amended, shooting Dustin a pointed look, “And we’re going to be wandering the woods to do it. So, I’m gonna lay down some rules here—“

Max rose her brows, but Mike beat her to a reply, “Rules?”

“Yeah, rules,” Steve reaffirmed, nodding down at them, “Because I almost broke my damn neck falling into that ditch Sunday night, and if I’m going to be in charge of you guys, you can’t just be, like, dying on my watch. So, we’re gonna have some rules.”

Lucas crossed his arms, “Like what, exactly?”

All four of the eighth graders turned their gazes up to Harrington, and under all four sets of eyes, he stood, firm and steady.

“Like, for starters, no more disappearing where I can’t see you. We all gotta stick together—“

They all nodded in understanding, and he continued.

* * *

Steve Harrington must have been the most selfish, air headed person to walk the planet.

Standing at the edge of a driveway with her hands in her pockets, Mandy kicked at the gravel beneath her feet. It had been two and a half hours of standing in the dreary December weather, rubbing her arms to keep warm and sniffing slightly against the sting on her nose from the cold as she awaited Steve Harrington’s arrival home. The contractor that met her there stood alongside her, leaning against his truck.

“Look, Sweetheart,” The gruff older man began, expression sympathetic as he pushed off his truck to approach her, “It’s getting late, and I got kids—a family—“

Mandy shook her head, waving off his explanation, “I’m sorry. I-I told him—“

And she had. She had tried to catch Steve Harrington all fucking day to tell him about bringing a workman over, and had finally managed to catch him in the hall just at the end of school. He had nodded at her when she explained the situation, before booking it over to the gym for basketball practice. And after all of that trouble, he fucking blew her off. Fucking Harrington.

Her humiliation and anger simmered low in her veins. She was a crockpot of seething hatred. The older man seemed nice about it all, really, but she could tell he was only waiting with her out of pity at that point, and Mandy couldn’t help but frown.

“It’s alright,” He cut her off placidly, “I’m sure he just forgot. It’s getting dark, though, and it’s probably time to call it.”

Mandy nodded along with his words forlornly as they exchanged niceties, shaking hands and bidding one another goodnight before the man hopped back into his Ford and reversed from the driveway. Mandy stood at the mouth of the garage, sending the man one last lackluster wave in parting, before his headlamps swung off her onto the street, and he put the car into drive, honking one last time in parting before speeding off. 

Mandy stood in driveway for a few moments longer, arms crossed as she looked to the faint, golden glow the sun painted the cloudy sky just as twilight was falling over the quiet town. She couldn’t really be surprised at this point, she supposed, that Harrington had ditched her. He was about as empty-headed as boys got, and as much as Mandy resented it—it was so true to form for him to ditch her like this. With a sigh, Mandy wondered why she even bothered anymore. 

With a huffy stomp, Mandy marched back over to her new mode of transportation—a mint-condition, sparkly, aquamarine blue Schwinn, tricked out with white-walled tires and a basket. It was an abomination gifted to her back in freshman year, when a car wasn’t quite on the menu yet, but her parents were determined to think of themselves as magnanimous and loving—and totally not guilty of basically incarcerating their child. This thing, Mandy lamented ungratefully, should have stayed in the garage collecting dust as far as she was concerned. She lifted it off the ground to right it, and the little bell chimed by accident as she tried to reorient the handlebars, making her scowl. So annoying.

Her frustration was mounting as she hopped onto the bike, pedaling down the driveway and turning onto the residential street. She had probably another hour or so of daylight, and Mandy wasn’t quite ready to go home yet. Her parents awaited her at home, and the two of them had no comprehension of personal space. All she wanted to do was listen to her radio in peace, but that wasn’t an option, given her father was down the hall, barking about work calls and all that racket. He really was such an asshole.

As light dimmed, and dusk fast approached, houselights started to flip on, along with multicolored strings of Christmas lights. Each house illuminated as she rode past and just as she took a turn onto a thru-street, only slightly distracted by a Snoopy lawn ornament, Eleven appeared smack-dab in the middle of her path.

At the younger girl’s abrupt appearance, Mandy let out a series of bewildered vowel sounds, swerving her bike around her form, wobbling as she struggled to stay upright, before feeling herself go sideways and all but collapse on the side of the road. She avoided a big fall by hopping off her bike as it toppled and skidded across the crispy, leafy ground, her jogging to a stop beside it and breathing hard as she whipped her head around to shoot Eleven a wide-eyed, gaping look.

“Fuckin’ A, El!” Mandy screeched, before she was gesturing wildly to her abandoned bike and the pile of leaves it was currently nestled in, “I almost died! Can you give me some warning for once?!”

Eleven rose her brows, glancing around uncomfortably, face pulled into an almost grimace, “Sorry.”

Mandy let out a breath that was both relieved and tired, before dropping her arms and moving to lift her bike from the pile of leaves it had fell into on the edge of somebody’s lawn. With a cacophonous rustle, she shook the leaves off her bike, dropping it back onto the ground upright with a pathetic, stunted chime of its bell, before swinging her leg back over it and settling her butt a little tentatively onto the seat. Gaze expectant, she looked back over her shoulder in Eleven’s direction, watching the little girl’s apologetic expression, before waving her over breezily.

“Yeah, yeah, alright. Enough of looking so sad. Get over here and hop on already.”

At her words, Eleven’s expression lit up as she scurried over, a smile pulling at her features, and Mandy shook her head with a roll of her eyes as she smiled in return.

* * *

Dead, dried up leaves fell from the trees, and people replaced them with technicolored strings of bulbs. The world always liked to dress up all of its depressing problems.

“I still don’t get it,” Eleven announced from atop handle bars, propped up with her arms behind her and her feet settled on either side of the bike’s front tire. Mandy pedaled past another house adorned with Christmas decorations, a lawn Santa shouting _‘ho, ho, ho!’_ somewhat aggressively in the girls’ collective direction, “Why the lights?”

“Because,” Mandy shrugged in a non-explanation, “It’s fucking Christmas. Our good lord Jesus Christ saved the planet, or whatever, and we’re meant to give a shit.”

“Who?” Eleven asked, angling her chin over her shoulder to shoot Mandy a dubious glance from the corner of her vision, “ _Geezus?_ Who’s that?”

“Oh, just some guy everyone worships,” Mandy replied, unruffled and only half sarcastic, “The fact you haven’t heard of JC is kinda insane, Kid. He’s so famous people use his name as a swear, no joke. Imagine being that righteous. I wouldn’t even know what to do with myself.”

Eleven rose her brows, and Mandy was positive most of her words went over the younger girl’s head as Eleven questioned dully, “Is he the guy with the red suit? From the Coca Cola commercial? I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“That’s Santa,” Mandy explained, picking up her pace as she met an incline on the winding residential street, “And don’t rag on him, he won’t bring you gifts otherwise. He sees and hears everything, the jolly, old prick.”

“Gifts?” Eleven parroted, “Why would that man bring me gifts? I don’t even know him.”

“Why are you like this?” Mandy huffed out, becoming increasingly offended by Eleven’s lack of wonderment over Santa Claus. How very dare she, honestly. Her disenchantment was putting a damper on one of the only good parts about the holiday season, and Mandy needed to convince her that gifts and seasonal cheer were worth _something_ , “A remarkably fat and jolly man is willing to squeeze his ass down a chimney to bring you gifts, and you have the audacity to act all snooty about it. Honestly!”

Eleven craned her neck even further back to shoot Mandy a scrunched, disbelieving look, “Are you… playing a trick on me?”

“No!” Mandy exclaimed over her chuckling at Eleven’s skeptical expression, “Santa really brings good children gifts! And gives coal to all the rotten ones. So, you better shape up, Missy—“

She couldn’t even finish her statement before Eleven was interrogating boldly, “What does he bring you then?”

The intense look in Eleven’s eye told Mandy that she was certainly expecting a particular answer, and Mandy was affronted by her willingness to confront Mandy’s lie. Santa was a childhood staple, and Eleven wasn’t allowed to escape her test tube, come out into the world, and ruin all the fun. She had to believe in Santa with the rest of them. Hell, even Mandy believed in Santa. Well, kinda. She had total faith that for at least two more years, Santa would be showing up with some fat ass gifts for the best little girl of the Mueller household. Until the day the gifts stopped, Santa was real, and Eleven got to quit being such a fucking spoil sport about it.

“Tons of stuff,” Mandy replied vaguely, brows furrowing on her face as she frowned to herself defensively.

“Yeah, right,” Eleven snorted, turning dismissively to stare ahead once more, and Mandy audibly gasped, swerving slightly on her bike as she nearly crashed in her horror.

“I can’t believe you! You are seriously trying to insinuate I’m rotten!” Many cried out, horrified and amused in equal measure by Eleven’s gall.

“Santa sounds like a lie,” Was all Eleven replied with, tone dull and tired.

“Well, _ugh—!”_ Mandy grunted out bewilderedly, “He kinda is, but it doesn’t make him any less real! The gifts do end up under the tree on Christmas!”

Eleven paused, turning a single eye back onto Mandy as she swiveled back around, “Then why haven’t I ever got a gift before?”

Oh. So much for all the playful insults and Mandy’s melodramatic disgruntlement. Eleven really was a little bit hurt to not have experienced Christmas first hand yet, Mandy saw now in her mind. Eleven didn’t get pine trees adorned in lace and sparkly baubles, or hot cocoa and wool socks by the fire place, or the giddiness of crawling from a warm bed and sprinting out into the chilly living room on Christmas morning to find a stash of golden wrapped gifts. Eleven had only ever gotten cold white tiles and the bitter winter wind howling through the deadened trees. Mandy pursed her lips as she thought up a reply, quick.

“Because,” Mandy explained simply, as if it were obvious, “Santa’s forgetful—he’s, like, a hundred years old, or whatever. He’s probably losing it in his old age, but don’t worry! I’ll make sure he doesn’t forget you this year, Kid. I mean, I’ll shake him down if I gotta. I’ll lay it on thick. You’re probably gonna get so much shit now. I bet he feels real guilty for forgetting you all these years.”

Eleven’s mouth pinched slightly, the corners of her lips quirking up at Mandy’s words as she spun back around, not wanting to challenge the implications of Mandy’s words.

“What do you do for Christmas then? Lights?” Eleven asked, seeming ready to steer the conversation from any more talk of Santa, “Everyone else has lights.”

“Oh, yeah,” Mandy agreed mindlessly, allowing herself to glide along the side of the road as the incline leveled out, kicking her legs up as she leaned back slightly, “Lights, tree, store bought cookies. The whole shebang. My family is big on Christmas, which is kind of weird, given I’m half Jewish, but whatever. We used to go to my Grandma’s house out in the Poconos on the last day of Hanukkah. She used to get so mad at my mom for bringing store bought cake.”

“Hanukkah?” Eleven repeated, seeming more interested in that holiday over Christmas, for whatever reason. Mandy suspected it was because she probably heard a lot about Christmas, but not much about the Jewish celebration. Also, Mandy noted as she peeked into the girl’s curious mind, she seemed to like the oddness of the word. But whatever.

“Oh, yeah. Basically, it’s Jewish Christmas, but better,” Mandy explained matter-of-factly, “Cause it’s eight days of gifts, instead of just one. Every night for those eight days, my dad would light a candle on the menorah after dinner, and as dessert was eaten, he’d give me a gift. And let me tell you, my dad used to buy the craziest gifts back when I was a kid. He just always had to out-do everyone else. Not that I’m complaining, or anything, but it always ended up in a fight between my parents because my mom’s holiday was Christmas, and by the time Christmas came around, she had already gotten shown up by my dad’s Hanukkah’s gifts. Ugh, always a total headache. Used to happen every year, too.”

Eleven settled into a contemplative silence at that, seeming to try to envision the festivities, and Mandy decided to toss her a bone, feeding her memories of sitting in her grandmother’s pristine, white living room in her velvet dress and polished, patent leather shoes, watching her cousins play dreidel and listening to her family gossip in the kitchen. The luscious, warm smell of sweets and the crisp scent of popped champagne bottles, and the warm ambiance of the menorah glowing by the window, casting everything in a golden glow. She had always hated the stuffy family events growing up, really, but the gifts were always great, even if the company lacked, and she did… sort of miss it a little bit.

“No more?” Eleven asked, curiosity shining bright in her mind, and Mandy hummed.

“Too far away,” Mandy answered, rolling her eyes a little as she continued, “Now it’s just Christmas, and usually, it’s pretty tame. My parents catch a plane on the twenty-sixth for some tropical sex-travaganza, and then I get the New Year all to myself.”

Eleven blinked, obviously still a little starstruck by the images Mandy had shown her mind, before she was murmuring, “I like the candles better. They’re… warmer.”

“Yeah,” Mandy conceded, “But the lights don’t risk burning your house down, and look—“

Mandy gestured with one sweeping arm to the houses that lined the residential street, some with plain white lights, while others were adorned with green and red, and a few were wrapped in tangles of rainbow, haphazard strings.

“So much color,” Mandy laughed, looking around to the variable house dressings, “Can’t get that with a candle stick, can ya?”

Eleven’s gaze followed along the line of Mandy’s arm, her gaze keen, “It _is_ pretty.”

“Pretty, or not,” Mandy announced decisively, “At least it ain’t boring.”

Eleven agreed silently, tossing a smile over her shoulder in reply. Mandy continued watching the flurry of color from the corner of her eye—lush, warm reds, and soft, golden whites, and the smack of green that signaled the holiday of giving. There wasn’t anything quite as nice as a cold, December day, and the vibrant glow of holiday lights against the bleak canvas of winter. Except, just maybe, not having to pedal past them on a sparkly, grade-school bike, but Mandy would take what she could get.

“Not boring,” Eleven voiced her verdict aloud, gazing softly at the side of Mandy’s face while the blonde busied her mind with taking in the decorations of the neighborhood. She had never spotted such an open look of serenity on the older girl’s features, and found herself a little hypnotized by such a pleasant expression on a face that was almost always pulled into a variable sneer. Mandy Mueller was a sucker for Christmas, Eleven realized then. She could talk endlessly about the clumsiness of love and how the world was filled with horrible monsters, but even she couldn’t escape being overcome with Christmas cheer. It was such a sudden, odd thought to stumble upon that Eleven couldn’t even help the goofy smile that pulled at her lips as she reiterated, “ _Definitely_ not boring.”

Mandy, none-the-wiser to her companion’s thoughts, declared distractedly, “See? That’s what I’m sayin’!”

Eleven rolled her eyes good-naturedly.

* * *

Sometimes, life was a bad luck lottery in which the grand-prize winner got their fucking shiny, mint-condition Schwinn stolen. Or maybe that was just Mandy Mueller’s personal experience.

Mandy pedaled all the way into town, stopped at a convenience store, and dropped her bike to the ground with no hesitation to speed in and grab a drink and a Slim Jim. The ghost of Eleven’s consciousness trailed after her, brown curls bouncing with every step she took in her wake. She had wanted to make the trip fast, but she ended up distracted over the slushee machine that Eleven looked up at, starry-eyed and mesmerized.

“What’s this?” She questioned curiously as Mandy flicked her wrist and let the glass refrigerator door close.

“Slushee machine,” Mandy explained distractedly as she cracked open the Sprite she just snagged, taking a long gulp from the bottle and exhaling with a pleasurable sigh, “Ah, so refreshing.”

“Slushee?” Eleven asked, perking up and raising her brows innocuously, and Mandy waved her hands around in a lazy, vaguely dismissive gesture.

“Like, a cold drink that’s frozen, but stirred at the same time, so it’s—“

“Mike!” Eleven blurted out suddenly, gasping as her eyes widened, and Mandy’s brows jumped expectantly in reply.

“What?” She droned out confusedly, “No, it’s—“

“Mike—!” Eleven said again, before promptly disappearing with no other explanation, and Mandy extended her arms out indignantly, gaping slightly at the space Eleven just disappeared from.

“Uh—?! Rude to the max!” Mandy announced to the air before her, scowling now as she stared heatedly at the space Eleven just vacated. What a little troll! She had absolutely no manners! Like, ugh! Couldn’t Mandy get a ‘goodbye’, at least? An explanation? _Anything?_ So totally rude.

A throat clearing brought Mandy from her thoughts, and the young store cashier rose his brows from the end of the isle, wheeling around a mop and yellow bucket. Mandy snapped her neck in the direction of the sound, narrowing her eyes as she took in his acne and pudgy face.

“Get to that goddamn register and ring me up, Mop Boy.”

A bad mood settled over her head like a heavy hood as she snatched a Slim Jim on the way to the counter to pay the cashier. And as Mandy wiggled her fingers into her pockets for change distractedly after placing the bills on the counter, the cashier asked tentatively, “C-can… Can you—y’know? See… _the other side_ …? Speak with the… _departed_?”

Mandy choked on her own saliva, making an ugly sound in the back of her throat as she brought a fist of coins from her pockets, dropping them onto the countertop with an obnoxious chime, before grabbing her items in her hands and spinning on her heel to make a hasty exit. She had gotten one step towards the door, when the first domino to set off another terrible chain of events fell.

She spotted Mitchell fucking Radner hiking one of his little chicken legs over her Schwinn, a shit-eating grin smearing across his face as he hopped onto the seat and pedaled off with two friends riding after him. 

The sound she made was too shrill to be a croak, and it tore from her throat like the sensation of trying to swallow glass shards. Too horrified to move for those precious seconds, she watched it all happen in slow-motion. It was only when he was across the street, cackling like only a rotten brat could, that Mandy finally bursted into action.

“Fuck!” She all but shrieked, weight settling onto the balls of her feet as she lurched forward, shouldering into the glass convenience store doors, only to rebound off of them and smack into the floor with a pitiful flop, her drink and Slim Jim tumbling from her hands and clattering to the floor in different directions. 

“It’s a pull door,” Came the cashier’s unnecessary dry explanation.

All she had to say as she departed was, “Oh, my God! Shut up, I’m being robbed!”

As she tore from the store, already panting from distress as she sprinted up the sidewalk, hoping to pace Radner from the opposite side of the street, she heard Mop Boy call to her back, “Uh, you left your stuff!”

It really wasn’t the time for that, Mandy thought haphazardly. Her mind had become a frenetic tangling of stimulus around her—the rumble of car engines, and the distant jingle of store doors opening, and the buzz of mundane conversations. But through all the commotion and riotous human existence, her eyes had honed in on the back of Mitchell Radner’s head, gluing to the greasy strands like a zoom-in shot on an action movie. 

“Hey, that’s my fucking bike, you little punk!” At her scream, a woman behind her gave a scandalized gasp, and Mitchell Radner snapped his head back, laughing with malevolent joy, nose scrunching up and freckled face beaming evilly back at her. 

“Guess you’ll just have to go back to riding dick, Skankoid!” His friends laughed in a symphony of enraging, nasally cackles, and Mandy saw red. Blood fucking red. That was the last nail in Mitchel Radner’s little fucking dork-sized coffin. She was going to bleed him out like a pig once she got her hands on him.

Mandy took off like a rocket. Her legs sprung into action, and without the slight handicap of the heels she usually wore, she ran much faster than the three boys expected. Finally, she cheered wickedly within her mind, she wore reasonable footwear and it was to her advantage! All three of their humored voices broke off as Mandy sprinted across the street into steady traffic, causing a few cars to honk on their horns, and one car to stomp on the brake, tires squealing. 

“Holy shit, she’s insane!” One of their prepubescent voices screeched as she closed in on them in a surprisingly short span of time. The other two let out a series of startled yells in reply, before the same voice shouted, “Go faster! She’s gonna catch up!”

All three pushed their weight into their handlebars and pedaled harder down the next block of store fronts, and Mandy forced herself to keep up, knocking through foot traffic to the sound of bewildered cries, and hopping out onto the edge of the street when a work truck reversed out of an alleyway, directly in her path. The three kids took that moment to try and lose her, swerving around the truck bed and disappearing from her line of sight into the alleyway. Mandy turned after them without hesitation, breathing hard and feeling her limbs starting to burn as she fought to keep up. 

Garbage cans and litter lined the walls, and Radner hooked a hand into a metallic trash bin, sending all its contents sprawling across the floor in an attempt to hinder her, but Mandy merely hopped over the garbage bags, kicking out at the still-rolling cylinder with little care as she continued after them without pause. Radner, who had been watching to see how well his plan would work, took that exact moment to look terrified, eyes widening as he spun back around wildly and lifted his butt into the air to pedal faster.

“Come back here, you little fuckers!” Mandy screeched out breathlessly as they reached the end of the alleyway, Mandy mere feet behind them as they tried to cut the corner. She wasn’t going to let them do that, though, and that was exactly what ruined everything.

As they swerved out, attempting to misdirect her, Mandy cut towards the direction she was sure they were taking, planning on at least toppling one of the boys that pedaled at Mitchell Radner’s wings and hoping that some kind of domino effect would work in her favor. She took the turn right at the wall, neck craned to her left, only to be met with a very solid, very inconveniently placed, blockade.

The sudden stop was enough to make her release a startled yelp, and whatever whacked her square in the center of her chest made her give a pained moan as she toppled.

* * *

Max hated being right. It was one of her greatest curses in life. 

She worried about Billy’s erratic, completely unpredictable nature, and of course, she was totally right to worry. While the boys and Steve Harrington lived their lives clueless and completely free of worry, Max lived her life on a precarious tight-rope with each of her divorced parents on either end. Everything was a balancing act, and her mother’s husband’s son was a barbell being tossed onto her head, completely designed to ruin everything and send her crashing to the ground.

After a whole speech about safety in numbers and no wandering around the woods, Steve Harrington had slinked back out of The Palace arcade with the four of them in tow. He had slipped his sunglasses over his eyes, took his keys from his pockets, and marched towards his car, completely carefree. 

And then the screech of tires on asphalt sounded, and Billy appeared. 

The roar of an engine, a streak of bright blue, and the skid as he braked, parking his Camaro right behind Steve’s BMW, effectively blocking the car in—and then, without even turning off the engine, the driver’s door swung open, and her stepbrother was storming over.

“Really, Max?!” He barked, eyes hidden behind his sunglasses as he reached the sidewalk in record time. Max couldn’t see the exact look in his eye, but the tight, thin-lipped expression was enough for her to know she was in for some serious shit, “It’s not even the end of the fucking week, and you’re already disobeying me!”

She scuttled back without thought at her stepbrother’s fast approach, and Harrington made a point to stand in front of her, hands raised defensively, “C’mon, man, let’s be cool, alright? I was just taking the kids home.”

He wasn’t. None of the kids corrected him, though, and Max didn’t think her eyes could get any wider as she watched the interaction between the two older boys happen. Another fight had to be coming. Billy had tried to get her to tell him why she had been at Harrington’s house twice now—first in the house and another time on the way to school—and she was progressively worrying about new ways to outsmart him and give him the run-around. She didn’t have any good lies to cover monster aliens from other dimensions and hunting them with Hawkins High’s coolest senior. It sounded absurd on all fronts, and Billy discovering her with Harrington now only made things even more convoluted. She was majorly boned now. If lying was tough before, it was going to be near impossible now.

“ _Oh,_ ” Billy drawled out understandingly, voice ringing out with feigned mirth, “You’re just taking the kids home. Just Good Guy Steve, doing what good guys do—thinking of the children, taking the kids home. Well, that’s real fucking nice of you, Stevie, but I wasn’t fucking talking to you, was I? I was talking to Maxine.”

Billy pulled his sunglasses off his face, and the collective group stilled as he slowly turned his attention from Steve to settle ominously upon Max. Max shrunk a little uncomfortably under his cold stare.

“So, Maxine,” He began, tone a hollow, poor-imitation of friendliness, the sound of it setting Max’s teeth grinding slightly, “What the fuck are you doing at the arcade, when I told you to go to Wheeler’s house?”

Max blinked, making a sound of contemplation to fill the silence as she thought up a lie. She couldn’t come up with one, really, so instead, she said, hoping her tone was clueless and innocent enough to pull off the words: “I did go to the Wheelers’ house after school, Billy. I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to leave, though.”

Oh, boy, Max thought a little dizzyingly as she grimaced to herself. He was pissed. His eyes were draining of any sense, and she could see the flood of anger that was coming. He would have probably accepted a lie more readily than a twisting of the rules, and her playing dumb on top of it. Oh, Max lamented somberly, she was so _boned_. Her luck just kept getting worse. If Billy didn’t break her stereo or walkman for this, Max would be genuinely shocked.

“What?” He bit out snippily, cocking his head as he looked down on her like a merciless god, “I don’t think I heard you right, Maxine. It sounded like you just said you didn’t know—”

“Listen,” Steve tried again, stepping forward into Billy’s space. That was a bad move, Max thought. Her stepbrother was already angry, and Steve was just making things worse by crowding him. The saddest part was that Max wasn’t even sure if Harrington realized it, “It’s my fault, I—“

“You what?” Billy snapped, turning his attention back onto Steve. The slow, purposeful speech and deadly calm was replaced by a biting tone and a silver tongue eager to spear through Steve Harrington, “Huh, Harrington? You just— _what?_ Lead little girls away from their babysitters like some freaky-deeky Pied Piper? Max was over at the Wheelers’ being looked after, and you just decided to arrange a secret meeting with her—some thirteen year old girl? I don’t have to be the one to tell you why that’s majorly fucking creepy, right? Or maybe I do. Maybe you’re just so fucked up you don’t even realize how sick it is.”

“You’re making something out of nothing,” Steve explained, tone sharper now as he squared his shoulders and stood to his full height, readying for confrontation, “Maybe, if you’d just watch over your sister like you’re supposed to, man, I wouldn’t have to be the one giving her rides—“

“Oh!” Billy laughed, the sound ringing empty and malicious, before he was stepping further into Steve’s face to whisper, “So you’re one of those weirdos, huh? What kinda rides are you giving my stepsister, Harrington? That’s what I really wanna know.”

“You’re sick in the head, man,” Steve sneered, rearing back, before he was letting out a bewildered chuckle, as he pushed his sunglasses atop his head, “You need to be institutionalized. She’s a fucking kid.”

“Doesn’t seem to bother you much, though, does it?” Billy replied levelly, face turning stony as he waved his hand in the direction of the car, not so much as looking to Max as he called out, “Get in the car, Max. I’m driving you home.”

“No way,” Max paused, already in the middle of turning to go to the car, and tried not to look too surprised that it ended up being Mike Wheeler who stood up on her behalf, stepping forward with his fists clenched at his sides, “She’s not going anywhere with you. We’re not doing anything wrong.”

“Yeah!” Lucas and Dustin chimed in unison as all three of her friends stupidly stood up to her stepbrother. She would have smiled if she wasn’t so sure they were going to die horrific deaths within the next few minutes. 

Billy paused, taking in all three boys, brows progressively raising with each second that passed. When it all seemed to be too much, Billy’s frosty facade finally cracked as he tossed his head back and belted out a wheezing cackle.

Then, after a moment of obscene laughter, he asked, a dangerous grin adorning his features as openly mocked them, “ _Ooh,_ she’s not going anywhere. That’s big talk from a little shitbird like you, Wheeler. You know what’s gonna happen to you for talking to me like that…? You wanna find out?”

At the first threatening step Billy took towards Mike, Steve was stepping forward to match him, giving Billy an almighty shove that had him stumbling back a step, before he went straight to swinging. The first punch clipped Steve in the chin as he nearly dodged it, and Dustin gave an indignant cry over Billy getting the first hit in. 

Mike looked on in horror, face white as a sheet as he realized he was actually the cause of a fist fight, declaring dryly, “Oh, shit.”

“Kill ‘im, Steve!” Dustin roared as Billy and Steve continued to strike out at one another, Steve punching Billy right across the cheek and making him stumble back into the BMW, body twisted as he used a single had to stabilize himself, “C’mon! Lay him out!”

“Yeah! C’mon, Harrington! Kick his ass, man!” Lucas barked, cheering Steve on as well, as Max put a hand to her mouth, too panicked to find her voice. 

The boys continued to grapple with one another, Billy punching Steve so hard his sunglasses were sent flying between Max and Mike’s faces, causing both of them to jerk away from one another, disjointed and bewildered, before craning their necks to glance at the place where the glasses landed feet behind them. 

By the time they were looking back at the scene, it was because an older woman was releasing a shrill, indignant scream over the fist fight happening. Even Steve glanced in the direction of the woman’s voice, before Billy was hitting him so hard across the jaw his teeth clacked together. He followed up that up with a hard jab right in the abdomen that had Steve doubling over in pain.

“Oh, shit!” Both Dustin and Lucas shouted in unison as Billy managed to lock Harrington’s head under his arm, kneeing Steve until the boy was groaning and dry-heaving pitifully. Everyone bursted into motion at Billy’s merciless assault, scrambling forward to try and free Steve from Billy’s clutches. Dustin and Lucas went to work punching at any part of Billy they could reach as Max tried to yank her stepbrother back to no avail, even as Mike was pushing at his shoulder and yelling belligerently about a fair fight.

So, all of that was probably why no one had noticed all the girlish screaming coming from somewhere nearby, until a person was slamming through the cluster of bodies they had made-up, knocking apart Billy and Steve apart as both boys struggled to remain upright, Billy jerking back and releasing Steve so violently that the back of Billy’s elbow managed to catch Max’s ribs from where she had been standing behind him, trying to pull him back. Max doubled over slightly, winded from the sudden blow, while Mike and Lucas helped Steve right himself. Between all of them was the crumpled form of the person who collided head-on into their mass of limbs: Mandy Mueller.

Max didn’t know how her day had managed to get this bad, but as she spotted the teen girl, half-bent over and groaning as she rubbed her chest, she knew. There was just no way it would ever get worse than this. It would have been impossible.

On the floor at Mandy’s feet was Dustin, gaping as he mindlessly grasped at the ground, searching for his lost hat behind him as he goggled moronically up at Mueller’s form.

“Oh, my God. I think I just had my face between your magnificent boobs,” Dustin announced mindlessly, gaze faraway as he continued to paw helplessly at the ground in search of his discarded hat while wobbling into a sitting position.

That seemed to break everyone for their collective mystification as Steve yelled reproachfully, “Mandy!”

A bewildered chorus of _“Mandy?!”_ followed, and as if the sound of her name reminded her of who she was, the girl in question scowled, righting herself and standing straight to look miserably into Harrington’s face.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Steve?!” She bellowed, waving an arm passionately as her brows lowered on her face. She looked ready to continue, if not for a distant voice heckling from across the street.

“Walk much?! _Ha, ha!_ Later, Skankoid! Thanks for the wheels!” At the sound of Mitchell Radner’s distinctly nasally voice, Mandy snapped her head away from the group, expression going slack as she watched him ride off on a sparkly, baby blue bike that Max could only assume had been Mueller’s merely moments ago. 

“What the hell is that all about?” Steve wondered aloud, swelling face grimacing, and Mandy looked back at him forbiddingly.

“What the hell is all of _this_ about?!” She exclaimed in return, “I’ve been waiting at your fucking house for hours now, Steve! We agreed to meet with the fix-it guy! Why aren’t you at your fucking house?!”

Steve’s eyes widened as he paused, a stricken expression overcoming him as he paled in the face of that question, and Max was ready to roll her eyes. Steve Harrington might have genuinely brought on his own death by managing not only to enrage Max’s stepbrother, but also Mandy Mueller, a girl who had an insane killer instinct and apparently knew karate, if Saturday night was anything to go by. He was a deadman walking, Max thought grievously. 

With Steve’s reply coming slow, Billy stepped in, vicious and angry still as he waved a hand through the air in Steve’s direction, explaining heatedly, “He’s too busy sneaking kids off from their fucking babysitters, apparently!”

Mandy glanced in Billy’s direction with a confused frown, her brows knitting in the middle of her face, “What?”

“Oh, you haven’t heard?” Billy continued, brows raising mockingly in Mueller’s direction, “Harrington, here, was just planning to sneak off to who-knows-where to do who-knows-what with this bunch of nerds!”

Mandy paused, seeming to mull over Billy’s words before rolling her eyes and declaring dismissively, “Oh, shut up, Hargrove. Now’s not the time for jokes, I’m being serious.”

And with that, she turned her deploring gaze back onto Harrington, looking ready to yell, until Billy spoke up again.

Billy reared back from her as he continued irritably, glaring at the side of Mueller’s head, “I’m not fucking around! He was—!“

Steve didn’t let him finish, cutting him off to interject condescendingly, “Man, are you hard of hearing, or what? I already told you I was just driving them—!”

Steve never got to finish what he was saying, before Billy clapped him across the face again, following it up by trying to pummel him to the ground, one hand grabbing Steve’s collar while the other punched him. Mandy pushed her way into the fray, shoving at Billy hard enough that he lost his hold on Harrington and stumbled back into Steve’s car, both of them leaving Steve to stagger, struggling to remain standing as he held a hand over his right eye, groaning.

Max and the rest of The Party moved to help him, Dustin tucking himself into Steve’s side to help him get upright, as Mandy and Billy faced off a few feet away, exchanging words with wild waving of their arms. Max watched them from the corner of her eye nervously, anticipating something very bad to happen.

And she was right. It happened within a shallow breath. Mueller gave Billy another shove that had him flopping back into the driver’s side of Steve car, before she was stalking towards him as he tried to move forward again, looking ready to shove through her. The second she made to push him again, Billy grabbed her by the forearms, twisting their bodies around and flinging her back into the car door, locking her wrists against the car near her shoulders as she squirmed.

At being helplessly ensnared, Mandy screeched, “Let me go, you jackass!”

Billy fought her back as she writhed around with her back against Steve’s car, trying to buck Billy off of her, only for him to press his body firmly up against her to keep her pinned. He leaned closer to her to say lowly, “Why don’t you make me, huh? You come in here all tough, right? You wanna push me around? Let’s see you do it then, Princess!”

She tried kicking at him in reply, only for Billy to worm a leg between hers and box out the offending appendage. Seething, she ground out from between her teeth, “I’m not asking again. Let me go, or _else_.”

Her threat only served to make him chuckle, eyes staring down at her heatedly as he goaded, “How about you ask nicely, and I’ll think about it? You ain’t going anywhere otherwise.”

A muscle jumped in her neck as she met Billy’s heavy gaze, giving up on struggling against his stronger hold, and as Steve noticed their position, he called out, “Hey, hey! Let her go, man!”

Neither of them moved from their positions, or even looked away from one another’s eyes, and as Steve moved towards them, hand just managing to make contact with Billy’s shoulder to separate the two, Billy abruptly collapsed in a heap of meat, knees giving out from under him as his skull met the pavement with an unimpressive thud. 

No one said anything, all eyes turning down to stare in shock at Billy’s collapsed form, except Mueller, whose cold gaze stared out to the empty space Billy’s face left for a moment too long, before sliding down to the floor to gaze upon him blandly. 

And if that was suspicious, Max said nothing about it.


	23. All Dogs Go to Heaven (Except Billy Hargrove)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, scared little boys become terrifying men, and angry little girls stay angry for a reason.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg ok so i know i have ppl to reply to (AND I'M GONNA I SWEAR) but i had to get this chap out b/c its nearing a MONTH of me going ghost on posting and i REFUSE to leave this story and all you guys just HANGING lol. dsljfhkdslfdla also SORRY b/c this chaps not as polished as i'd like b/c i'm going through it right now tbh. not in a bad way or anything (well... not in a SERIOUSLY bad way lol), but i'm busy and idek, my life's been moving way too fast for me lately and my slow ass is just trying to keep up rn lol. so if my chaps rly start lagging, just know I'm sorry and DEF not abandoning this story lol
> 
> as usual, overwhelm me w/ everything you hate, love, or want to strangle me over! (i think there might be a few things in this chap that ppl will have opinions about and i'm just..... sorry in advanced guys lol) lmao ANYWAY! i just LOVE hearing from you guys (even if I'm so SLOW w/ replies lmao I'm a fuckin cretin) yall really do inspire and motivate me to keep writing! <3 and I cherish you for it!! <3
> 
> oh, and p.s. trigger warning???? mentions of child abuse. but you all knew it would come to this, didn't you? lol i always tell myself I'm gonna just hint at trauma and just be mysterious about it b/c i know a lot of us have grown up in messed up households, but then I fucking write chaps like this. lmao i'm so sick of myself i'm just gonna kick my own ass at this point lol
> 
> also, p.p.s. this chapter is a million fucking words long tbh so i had to chop off 3000+ words b/c it was TOO LONG. it was just.... so. unreasonably. LONG. lmao

Most people were simply straw men with delusions of grandeur. Held together with flimsy strings, they stood as sad little bundles that were prone to toppling over themselves. If gravity grew too heavy, or the wind blew a little too hard, they fell. They were weak for the simplest of things—like match sticks, or mean words. And at the top of all their many weaknesses, rested their very obvious enslavement to their emotions. Hate, sadness, love, or joy—it made very little difference. People were always pathetic when faced with what hid inside of their own hearts.

Mandy told herself that she was better than that. She didn’t catch fire, and she didn’t crumple against the gentle breeze, and she no longer fell under the compulsion of her own emotions. She was hardened by life, and resolute to endure—even if she bitched the whole fucking ride. Her heart was merely a cold little stone she carried around in her chest. It had no say, especially in the rare instances it actually had something to share.

It was for those reasons that people’s weakness meant very little to her. Hurt feelings and broken hearts held no worth. The populace had such cruel minds, and such gross thoughts, and maybe, she reasoned, it was only fair that they stewed together in their collective misery. 

And maybe, it was that mentality that kept getting her into all this fucking trouble.

Now, obviously, she’d done horrible things before. Mandy Mueller was a villainous face amongst the high school populace for good reason. She was the most dangerous concoction of selfish and mean-spirited, and she held nearly no remorse for all her terrible acts. But sometimes, there were instances where she hadn’t meant to destroy, or terrorize, or hurt. They were few, and far between, but still. There had been some.

Once, as a child still too small to even peer atop countertops, she broke a fancy dish during a formal dinner. Her parents hadn’t been paying attention to her, and she hadn’t really known better. She just wanted someone to talk to her, really, and she didn’t completely understand the ramifications of her actions. When she saw what she had done, leaving the plate as little more than dust and gilded shards, she had wailed her repentance, looking at all its shattered pieces with great regret. Her nanny had rushed over then, grabbing her small hands and assuring her it would be alright as long as she wasn’t hurt, that plates could always just be bought again. And really, she had been right, Mandy supposed, even if she didn’t quite understand the reason for Mandy’s tears.

Another time, when she was still a young, catholic school girl, oblivious to the greater picture, a boy hit her on the playground, and she had slapped him so hard in return, he had to be sent home, crying and bleeding above his eye. She was punished, made to sit in during recess for a whole week while that boy had been let out to play with friends, a fresh set of stitches adorning his face. Despite the unfairness of it all, she had felt so bad, she wrote him an apology letter. She had been haunted by that horrified, grief-stricken look on his face, and that sharp pang of surprise within his mind. He hadn’t ever been hit before, and he hadn’t known pain like the kind she had dealt him. She loathed that she became the first face he recalled when he thought of the word ugly.

In one of the more memorable instances, when she had been locked up in a colorless prison, mind being tossed about in a maddening sea of endless suffering, her anger gripped her insides, violent and vindictive. She had been a caged animal then, hungry and aching against the helplessness that ensnared her. She lived as an empty husk, filled with nothing but bleak shadows and the sound of plaintive cries cutting through the dark. They had fed her new pills, and had locked her away under observation for so long that when she finally was finally let out at midday that day that boy’s mind was the one thing that ended up setting her off. She couldn’t help it. He had always been like a rotten tooth, all his insides hollowed out and left with nothing more than blackened decay. At sixteen, they had sent him away for some real life Norman Bates shit, and Mandy had always quietly disliked him from her corner of the common room until that day, when she turned her disapproving stare onto him to find he was already looking at her, eyes wanting and twisted mind imagining all the ways he could break her smaller form.

In that moment, her sense left her, and her vicious fury seized control; all her aches and rage spearheaded, and turned right on him. She had been nothing but dull misery for so long, and then, she was an explosion of frightful violence and movement. One moment, she was hunched over in an arm chair, idly playing a game of checkers, and the next, the game clattered to the floor, pieces scattering, and her chair flung aside. She had pounced on him, grappling him into submission with her knees on either side of his torso as he struggled to fight her off, bucking and shrieking. Her nails carved their ways into his eye sockets without much thought on her part, and _finally_ , he had gotten a small taste the suffering he imparted on his victims. Small birds and animals, and the one little girl who ended up being the reason he got sent away—all the people and things he ever savored destroying, their screams and cries would never weigh heavy enough on him. But his own pain, and his own screeching, and his own helplessness—they were heavy. They would be a constant reminder, a daily remembrance, all gifted by a twelve year-old Mandy Mueller. Before her, he had claimed himself a monstrous, untamable god, and after, he was nothing but a writhing worm, torn down from the sky and stomped face-first into the dirt.

Hours later, after she had been dragged off of him and given a sedative that didn’t work, and an ice bath that did nothing but make her shake all over and thrash, and a good zapping that melted her brain into a warm slush of incoherence, her anger finally tempered back into the cold drip of her moroseness and her mind returned to her, hazy and buzzing. At the end of it all, she shook in her dark room, alone and locked away again, wrapped in a jacket that had her hugging herself without much choice, the ends of her hair dripping and her head floating off somewhere near the ceiling; and it all meant nothing to her. That time, though she hadn’t meant it, she had lost control, becoming a slave to her worst self as she tore into him with a ferociousness she hadn’t ever exhibited before. That time changed her. That time, she had no remorse for what she had done.

This time was different. This wasn’t a broken plate, or a mean boy on the playground, or a psycho who was asking for it, but somehow, it was also a little bit of all of those things together. This time, it was Billy Hargrove, a boy whose mind howled at the sight of her, and who she wanted nothing more than to slap whenever he opened his mouth to speak. He was the embodiment of frustration, and the most irritating mixture of clever and disgusting, and still, Mandy felt wrong for what she had done to him. He was the first to strike, and he kind of asked for it, really, but despite those things, Mandy still didn’t mean to do it. It just all happened so fast, and she couldn’t really help it, and she didn’t mean to, and—and— _and_ —

And it started like this: Billy Hargrove was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

After dealing with a series of infuriating circumstances, he just happened to be the one straw that broke the camel’s metaphorical back. The weight of the world had been boring down in her skull, and her eyes had felt like they could have shot out of their sockets, and he had trapped her in that way he always liked to. And Mandy couldn’t handle it. Not today. Not this time, when her anger gripped at her throat and stung her eyes, and he was looking down at her, hungry and malicious in that way she loathed.

She needed to lash out. She wanted to fight her way free, or even scream in his face and cry in her frustration, but none of that happened. Instead, without her body being able move, and without being able to find her voice under the rushing sensation of panic and dismay, her mind lashed out. A deadly coil that twined itself tight around Billy Hargrove’s head and squeezed down until his stream of consciousness trickled to a piddly little rivulet, before stopping altogether. Even more troubling was that she hadn’t even realized she was doing it, until his thoughts had promptly disappeared and his emotions became like that fuzzy halo the television left in the air after being promptly shut off.

It hadn’t been like that monster. She hadn’t yanked a plug, or fought her way through his head, digging deep into him and shoveling out his very being. No, instead, his mind had been open to her, a soft, helpless thing that was too weak to even fight her off, let alone even know what she had been doing to him. For once, Billy Hargrove had been weak, and tender, and so very pliable for her wickedness.

When he dropped to the ground, soundless and still, her breath left her in one choked, desperate wheeze. That last helpless whisper of his mind was still echoing inside her cranium, the confusion and sudden vulnerability was cast as a dim specter in the back of her eyes still, burning them in a way that really made her want to cry. This was bad, she realized then as she turned her gaze down onto his collapsed form at her feet. Very, hopelessly, terribly bad. Especially bad, because she hadn’t meant to do it at all, let alone knew how she even did it in the first place.

So, in conclusion, she didn’t really know how to fix this. Or, well, _him_. Because that was what she broke this time. Mandy Mueller, vindictive and villainous even in all the places the world couldn’t see, had broken Billy Hargrove’s mind. Probably irreparably, and without even realizing it until it was too late. And unlike that plate, she couldn’t just go out and buy a new one. She choked down the wail that wanted to escape as her mind settled on that final thought.

Steve Harrington crouched down at Hargrove’s side, waving a hand around in front of his face as the kids around them circled curiously closer.

Quietly, one voice asked no one in particular, "Is he dead?"

“Hey, Hargrove?” Harrington tried tentatively, reaching out to try and shake the boy awake. Mandy suspected it wasn’t going to do much, even as he continued, “Man, c’mon—“

“Maybe a blood vessel just bursted in his brain,” One of the kids suggested through a lisp, “And he just died of a brain hemorrhage right in front of our eyes.”

Oh, god, Mandy was officially sweating. Did she just fucking pop Billy Hargrove’s brain like a blood-filled water balloon? 

A chorus of voices exclaimed, condemning and exasperated in equal measure, “Dustin!”

“Yeah,” Steve complained up at the boy responsible for that bleak thought, “C’mon, man, we can’t just go thinking the worst. Any of you have a mirror?”

All four little heads swiveled towards her expectantly, and she didn’t even have a chance to be offended by their assumption that she was the only one in the group vain enough to carry around a compact in her pocket, before Steve’s eyes were turning towards her as well, taking her in for a moment as he asked suddenly, “Hey, are you alright, Mandy? You look a little pale.”

Her brows knitted low in the middle of her face as she leaned into her cheap, snobby veneer, “Excuse me? If I’m pale, you’re a ghost, Steve!”

Steve withheld from rolling his eyes, looking away briefly, before looking back to her as Mandy reached into her pocket and supplied a small compact mirror wordlessly, a frown still marring her features. She crossed her arms as Steve flipped it open and held it under Billy’s nose, and everyone held their collective breaths, while Mandy withheld from shoving her fist in her mouth to bite her knuckles.

The mirror fogged up, and a small voice in the group bemoaned as everyone spotted it, “Aw, man. He’s actually alive. Sorry, Max.”

Mandy refused to even acknowledge that voice, too busy inwardly cheering at the revelation that she hadn’t actually killed Billy Hargrove. If anyone would have told her a month ago that she would eventually be happy to hear news of Billy Hargrove’s life remaining in tact, she would have called them a filthy liar—but alas, here she was, ready to throw her arms in the air and roar with victory over Hargrove breathing still. Fate was such an unfunny bitch, honestly.

“Lucas!” Wheeler admonished, throwing his arms in the air as he shot his friend an indignant look, “Seriously?!”

A boy with an afro and a corduroy jacket was the one to reply to that, shrugging as he called back defensively, “What? I’m not wrong, and you know it, Mike.” 

The last boy spoke up over the two as they continued to squabble mindlessly, adjusting his hat and looking to Steve as he questioned, “So, he’s alive?”

Steve shrugged haplessly in reply, “Yeah, looks like he’s just out cold, man.”

Michael Wheeler spoke up next, sliding himself back into the conversation and promptly ignoring his friend, Lucas, who he had just previously been bickering with, “ _Soooo…_ should we call him an ambulance, or something?”

“No!” She exclaimed defensively, and Mandy really wished she would have waited a millisecond before letting that lurch out of her. Now, everyone was looking at her like a heavy cloak of culpability was hanging plain and obvious around her shoulders. 

After a beat of uncomfortable staring, Max finally spoke up, “We can’t.”

“What—?! Max, be serious!” Mike insisted, but Max merely shook her head, her curtain of thick, red locks swinging.

“No way, Mike,” Max said firmly, “If I take Billy to the hospital, my parents will freak! We cannot call an ambulance.”

Mandy looked between Wheeler and Maxine, before announcing as nonchalantly as possible, shrugging cooly to further sell the act, “What would the point be, anyway? He’s not, like, dying, or anything.”

Max nodded along emphatically to her words, and Mandy couldn’t help but narrow her eyes suspiciously to the girl. Just what the hell was she hiding, anyway? Mandy was acting guilty and weird, because she was fucking guilty and feeling weird about it! Why was Max so adamant to avoid the hospital? Mandy turned her laser-focused eyes onto Maxine, hoping to catch her gaze and look into her mind.

“Right!” Max continued, before Harrington was interjecting a little concernedly.

“Well…” He began, his voice hesitant as his mind debated over his next course of action, “I don’t know, Max…”

“Yeah!” Mike insisted, inserting himself passionately into a conversation Mandy would have preferred for him to kindly butt-out of, “What if he doesn’t wake up, Max!?! What then?!”

“Well, I guess he just doesn’t wake up then, Mike! I’ll figure something out if that happens!” Max exclaimed, waving her hands around, while Mandy looked at the varying expressions of the group. Everyone seemed either confused, curious, or worried, and Mandy tried to get a collective reading on everyone, noticing that almost nobody seemed at all suspicious of her, except for maybe Max. She squinted slightly down at the girl, before deciding that, as she was a child of reason, she would probably rule out any _absurd_ theories like Mandy Mueller accidentally mind-assaulting her terrible stepbrother and turning him into a human vegetable. So, Mandy was probably in the clear on that end.

Mandy clapped her hands together, “Well, that settles it!”

“Uh,” Mike muttered snottily under her voice, “It really doesn’t.”

Mandy ignored him, instead opting to step between Billy’s legs and round the other side of him, moving to crouch beside his head and prod at his face. He didn’t move, and Mandy let her fingers trail down the side of his neck, pushing a few inches beneath his ear to find his pulse jumping towards her touch. When she felt that, she moved her hand back to his face and slapped the side of his cheek encouragingly, only for him to still not wake up.

Hm, problematic. He was alive, but not responsive. Heart pumping, and lungs breathing, but still inconveniently not awake. Which would probably mean that Mandy really _did_ do something terrible to his mind, and he was probably a fucking vegetable now. Great. Just fucking wonderful. 

She had the option of leaving it be and hoping from afar that he woke up, but Mandy wasn’t quite sure if she could do that. Most people’s minds were active when they slept. Not in the typical ways, of course, but soft like a lulling white noise that Mandy could press her consciousness against and pick up on. But he wasn’t even that, and Mandy was definitely to blame. As she realized that it was very likely Billy Hargrove may never wake up thanks to her, she thought of only one way to navigate this situation: She was going to have to fix him.

Ugh. How tiring. It was easier said than done, she knew, but she doggedly refused to acknowledge that bleak thought as she shuffled around to place her feet on either side of Hargrove’s head, shoving her hands under his shoulders and hooking them under his armpits to lift him.

“Oh, whoa!” Steve exclaimed, waving an arm around to the place she had begun to lift Billy from the ground, “What are you doing?”

Oh, Mandy paused, suddenly remembering she currently had an audience to witness her basically kidnapping Hargrove’s unconscious form. Right.

“I’m, uh, taking him home, Steve,” Mandy replied hazily, hefting Hargrove up and standing, bending over slightly as she struggled with his weight, before dragging him gracelessly across the pavement, his heels scraping against the ground. She glanced up towards the kids as Steve wordlessly stood from his crouched position, still uselessly holding her open compact. With a nod in the kids’ collective direction, she gestured over towards the car with a cock of her head, “C’mon, Maxie. Chop, chop!”

Max’s ginger eyebrows jumped towards her hairline as she gaped stupidly, watching Mandy drag her stepbrother away, huffing and puffing in exertion, before finally trailing after her without another word. She paused, like she was just remembering something, before Max turned back around to bid her friend group goodbye, sending them one last pathetic wave, “Oh… Uh, gotta go. See you guys later, I guess.”

So articulate, Mandy thought derisively to herself as she rolled her eyes, nearing Billy’s tacky blue, American-made monster. When she reached the passenger side door, she had to bend to get him around the middle with one arm, while reaching behind her and pawing stupidly for a door handle she knew was there, but was unsure of its specific location. She ended up struggling for all of a second, before Max was jogging over and opening the door wordlessly for her.

“Thanks,” Mandy muttered thoughtlessly as she tried to flip forward the seat, only for Max to have to do that as well, before she was flopping backwards into the back of the car, wiggling her butt up into the driver’s side backseat and dragging Billy’s boneless form along for the ride. He didn’t go easy, either, his whole body was the equivalent of a runny egg in her hands—more fluid than solid. Mandy couldn’t seem to get ahold of the underside of his arms, and instead wrapped both arms around his middle and gave a great heave as she pulled him fully atop of her inside the back of the cab. 

With Hargrove’s heavy form squishing her, Mandy shoved her head out from under his shoulder and gasped, her legs still kicking from out of the passenger door, and Max took that exact moment to lean into the car and shoot her a pitying look, “Do you need help?”

Mandy groaned, pushing Billy over and letting his face flop flat into the back of the backseat as she wiggled out from under him and reversed back out of the car the way she came, stumbling pathetically over Hargrove’s long, denim-clad legs, before tucking them in after him and letting the seat slide back to its upright position. Max looked on, brows raised, looking deceptively non-combative as she stepped back and looked to Mandy for the next course of action.

“Alright, all good,” Mandy sighed, holding her empty hands up before patting Max on the shoulder and moving around to the driver’s side, “C’mon, get in. We’re heading out, Kid.”

* * *

This must have been an alternate dimension. 

Max somehow survived a completely wordless car ride filled with only the deafening pulse of Van Halen blasting from the stereo and the violent roar of the engine as Mandy Mueller godlessly sped towards her destination. And that was odd, because nothing felt different. If Max closed her eyes during the quick drive, she could’ve easily forgotten she wasn’t in the car with Billy. 

Everything felt only slightly skewed from reality. Mandy Mueller’s presence was a little tenser than normal, and her gaze a little more manic. She wasn’t the cool girl from high school, or the wild thing from Saturday night. She had an edge to her that wasn’t obvious, but it was there—in the way she clenched the bottom of the steering wheel with one hand and drummed her fingers with the other, and the way her eyes jumped towards the rear-view mirror every other second, bright and anticipatory like she was waiting for something nasty to sneak up on her. Which, maybe she was. Billy had passed out when they were arguing, or whatever, right? Max reasoned that could be why she was antsy, that maybe she was worried Billy would wake up and they would go right back to fighting, but something else inside Max’s head, deeper and quieter, thought maybe it was for another reason, that Mandy Mueller wouldn’t ever be afraid of Billy, no matter how mean or destructive he was, and that her anxiety might have had another cause. But, Max conceded, she really didn’t have a clue as to what that could be.

Finally, when they were turning onto Old Cheery Road, Mandy looked towards Max, “What time do your parents get home?”

Max shrugged in reply, “Usually sometime around dinner. Should be a few hours until then.”

Some tension left her shoulders, “Okay, cool.”

She stopped the car in front of their little house with no ceremony, cutting out the engine and pulling up the e-brake with a jerk of the car, before pulling out the keys with a loud jingle and swinging open the car door to get out. Max followed suit wordlessly, hopping out of the car to meet the quiet sounds of the neighborhood and the distant rumble of a train on the tracks.

Mueller’s question felt like it opened a door to conversation, and Max couldn’t help but ask the question that kept plaguing her mind.

“Do you think he’s gonna be okay?”

Mandy paused in pulling up the seat, straightening her spine as she looked to Max, peering at her from over the hood of the car, “What?”

“Billy,” Max expanded, stumbling slightly over her words, “Do you think—I mean, he’s gonna wake up, right?”

“ _Uh,_ ” Mueller blinked, lips parting as her expression slackened for a moment, before she continued, tone trained into nonchalance, “I mean, yeah, of course.”

Okay, so that wasn’t very convincing. Max’s brows furrowed as she frowned worriedly at Mandy, who turned back to her work, reaching into the car and struggling to drag Billy from the back seat.

She had him by the jacket collar, using it as leverage as she pulled him from the car, his shoulders just slotting through the driver’s side door as Max spoke again, “I’m just asking, because on Sunday morning he was, like, bleeding. A lot.”

Mueller paused in her struggle to jerk Billy from the car, before losing her hold on him and dropping his upper body headfirst into the pavement with a dull conk. She let out a gasping squeak, bending down to drag him out completely, tugging on his jeans to get his legs fully out, before checking the back of his head for any injuries. After she found none, she shot Max a dirty look, asking frostily, “Are you gonna just sit there and stare, or are you gonna actually help me?”

“Oh, right,” Max said, only grimacing slightly at how constipated she sounded, “Sorry.”

Max moved around the car to Billy’s legs, kicking the car door shut gracelessly along the way, and both of them worked to carry him across the lawn, until they had to put him down, gingerly and with more care than he really deserved, to unlock the door and swing it open, revealing the inside of her home. Mueller took a moment to glance around suspiciously, slitted eyes settling for a moment too long on the opposite side of the room, before rolling her eyes and moving back to heft Billy back up.

Mueller lugged most of Billy’s weight, holding him so tight around his torso that his shirt rode up, exposing his belly button and mid-drift in a sight that had Max scrunching up her nose as she trudged along after, struggling with Billy’s miserably dense and noodle-y legs. Mueller continued her backwards path, leading them through the house without once stumbling, and Max couldn’t help but think that was a bit strange. Her brows lowered on her face as she watched Mueller move past the couch and side chair, rounding through the living room without a problem to turn the corner towards the hall that led to everyone’s bedrooms, kind of as if she… _knew_ the layout of the house. That was really weird, Max noted. Maybe, she reasoned, Billy had brought Mueller to the house when she wasn’t there. But why? She didn’t even like him, right? Max needed a moment to mull that over further when she wasn’t carrying around the dead weight of her meathead stepbrother.

Max was so busy trying to work out the mystery of Mandy Mueller’s omniscience while shuffling along after her that she didn’t notice the Christmas tree until it was too late. It bobbled with a jingle of ornaments and swung down onto her head with a rustling clatter, a glass bulb whacking her right in the middle of her forehead and springing across the room, somewhere beyond her awareness.

“Shit!” Max exclaimed instantaneously, hands instinctively dropping Billy’s legs with a clunk to defend herself against the offending tree. She shoved the tall topiary off of her, batting away its prickly green needles and sending it toppling to the floor in a mess of lights and hodgepodge ornaments.

When she looked back up from her helpless flailing, breathing hard still, she spotted Mueller staring at her, brows raised and expression thoroughly unimpressed. 

“Are you serious?” Mandy intoned dryly, and Max gaped indignantly in reply.

“It fell on me!” 

Mandy rolled her eyes, “Klutz.”

Max gasped, “I am not! Billy’s just so fat he knocked it over!”

“Uh-huh,” Mandy droned sarcastically, continuing toward the back of the house and dragging Billy along with her, “Whatever you say, Klutzilla.”

Max met her gaze, feeling thoroughly offended still as Mueller backed down the hall, shooting her a judgmental look the entire way. The older teen was so talented at making people feel small and stupid, Max thought begrudgingly. Damn her. The girl in question sent her a final mocking sneer as she kicked a leg out to the left of her and swung open Billy’s bedroom door, before turning into the room and disappearing from sight, grunting slightly from exertion.

From beyond her line of sight, Mueller called out breathlessly, “Fix the tree, Max!”

Max’s lips thinned as she looked down to the scattered ornaments on the ground and the sad, fallen Christmas tree at her feet. It almost felt like a normal day in her life, Max thought; it could have easily been her shitty stepbrother barking that order at her, and that might have been the one thing that troubled her most.

* * *

Eleven had seen everything. Hiding like a shadow in a darkened hallway, she had been an onlooker to Mandy’s gigantic fuck up without Mandy even realizing it. She did that sometimes, existed beyond Mandy’s awareness, just around the fucking bend like an annoying little eavesdropper.

Mandy caught her eye silently as she slowly closed the bathroom door shut, turning the lock on the knob as she effectively barricaded herself off from nosy little Maxine Mayfield. She didn’t need anyone seeing her in the throws of a mental breakdown and talking to invisible people. That was literally the last thing she needed, so she decided to dump Billy’s body onto his bed, making sure to settle him sideways lest he asphyxiate on his tongue, or whatever, before spiriting away to the small hallway bathroom. It was ugly, yellow, and bland, and it was probably the most fitting, abysmal backdrop for the current crisis she was slugging through.

“El,” Her voice came out in a hush, soft and desperate and somehow managing to catch on the single syllable. She shook her head, leaning back into the bathroom door she just shut, banging her head back into the wood once as she inwardly cursed herself for the break in her voice. The longer she stood there, eyes closed and head lolled back, resting against the door, the more she struggled to reign in her emotions. They swelled in the horrible silence, her dread blooming like the way a stab wound oozed bright red, a slow taint that had her crumpling to the floor and hiding her face in her hands in shame. 

Eleven had been right that night at Wheeler’s. She couldn’t just go around messing with these things. Reading minds and spilling secrets was petty, starting a fire by accidentally teleporting was dangerous, rewiring the inside of monsters was cruel, but this was the worst. For some reason, Mandy thought this was just so much worse than any other kind of injury she had ever dealt someone. Sure, she’d hurt people before—physically and emotionally—but she had never wormed her way into someone’s mind and played God. She had never broke into someone’s mind and violated it. And some very small, and usually very quiet, part of her wanted to scream and insist that she would never have done it if she could have controlled it. A person’s mind, she reasoned, was the one thing they had to themselves. It was their lives, and their dreams, and it was where they kept their most prized treasures—good memories, and beautiful sights, and lovely, happy, mushy-gushy feelings. And Mandy might have been evil, and she may have loathed the insides of people’s heads, but she wouldn’t _ever_ change them. There were still some things that even she wasn’t cruel enough to do.

Or maybe there wasn’t, anymore. Because as raw as it made her feel to acknowledge it, she had done just that. She had snuffed Billy Hargrove’s consciousness out as easy as blowing out a candle. In that moment, as her consciousness had rose up against his like a hundred foot rogue wave, she rushed over him, violent and furious, and smothered him out until there was nothing left. She had stripped him bare, and violated his mind. Took the one thing he could ever keep to himself, every soft piece of him that he hid away and cradled close to his chest, and wrung it out like a dirty dish towel, hanging it out to dry against the harsh, whipping winds of the outside world.

And she knew she had to fix it. She just didn’t know how. And that was probably what was making her feel so bleak and dejected, her eyes burning and her lips wobbling as she looked to Eleven helplessly from across the small bathroom.

The girl looked to her, her dove’s coo voice calling to her like an angel from on high, “I think I know a way to fix him.”

Mandy pulled her hands further from her face, revealing her hopeful expression, “How?”

* * *

An ugly white helmet, and an isolation tank. A dark space, and the feeling of weightlessness. A blind fold, and the static fo a television set. These were all the ways Eleven knew how to do what they were planning to attempt. 

If Billy Hargrove was truly stuck within the confines of his mind as Eleven had insisted he was, then Mandy would have to do what she did in the night—project her consciousness. Except, this time, she’d have to find a way to exist in his brain. Which was an entirely new conundrum. The infinite grayscale of the human mind was limitlessly impossible, and some part of Mandy was a little worried she would end up going in and never coming back out. For her own peace of mind, Mandy shut up that worry, smothering it down and stashing it in the back of her head as she moved forward with their plan.

The faucet turned, and a hissing disquiet enveloped the small space. It would have to do the job, Mandy decided, seeing as she couldn’t waltz right into the living room with a blindfold to turn on the television. Eleven looked to her approvingly, nodding as she deemed the white noise an acceptable substitute.

“Okay,” She began, voice somehow both soft and steely, “Now, get comfortable.”

Mandy looked only vaguely leery, before plopping down on the edge of the porcelain bathtub and shooting her a questioning look. Eleven shook her head, tilting her chin up and commanding softly, “Get in.”

Mandy waited for the punchline. None came.

She blinked, brows flying toward her hairline, “I’m sorry, what?”

Eleven shot her an unimpressed look, before making a shooing motion toward the tub, “Lay in it.”

“Lay _in_ it?!” Mandy whispered a little harsher than she intended. 

Eleven didn’t seem to care much about the blatant incredulity in Mandy’s tone, instead opting to raise her brows with a scathing amount of condescension.

“You have to be comfortable,” Eleven explained, “Not feel _any_ part of yourself. That's why you can do it when you sleep.”

Mandy begrudgingly understood, mouth twisting as she stepped into the tub with a clunk. She settled, limbs clanging along the edges of the tub as she plopped down, knees tucked up by her chin as she looked to Eleven again, who only nodded again, encouragingly this time. Mandy got the memo. She laid back, the back of her skull meeting the cold porcelain harshly. Wincing, she adjusted her body into a more comfortable position, looking to Eleven for approval.

Eleven nodded, “Close your eyes and focus.”

Mandy followed her directions, closing her eyes as she relaxed fully back into the uncomfortable edge of the bathtub. A moment went by, before Many creaked an eye open once more, “Focus on what, exactly?”

Eleven rose her brows, “Nothing.”

Mandy frowned stoically at her, and Eleven rolled her eyes, amending, “The sound.”

Just the sound, Mandy repeated to herself, shutting her eyes once again.

It felt like a fucking eternity of nothing but the sounds of her own breathing and the almost distant hiss of the running faucet, and her own vision being obscured by a curtain of darkness hanging heavy before her eyes. She felt like she was going to jump right out of her skin by the time she finally broke under her own anxiousness, opening both eyes as she jerked upright. Where light and the little cherubic face of Eleven should have been, Mandy was met with nothing but more darkness. She didn't even realize she couldn't hear the faucet anymore, nor the sound air rushing into her lungs.

It started with a closet, which was, objectively, a terrible place for anything to start.

A corduroy jacket hung above her head, whacking into her face as she sat up, tugging her knees towards her chest in the small space. She flicked the jacket away impatiently, before looking forward to spy the sliver of light illuminating from the bottom of the large, towering door before her. She realized then how strange the proportions of everything were; it was like she was experiencing the world from the inside of a fishbowl. Everything was a little too tall and wide, and every sound, from the creaking of the floorboards to the distant, unintelligible yelling, boomed and echoed, making her teeth ache slightly. Her eyes felt like they could just pop right out of her skull from the intensity of everything.

As she blinked and rubbed at her pained head, her ears picked up on the near-silent sniffling. Her head jerked up abruptly, her neck twisting to follow the sound as her eyes strained slightly in the dim ambience the amber sliver of light gave, before she spotted the source. A little snotty boy with a head of unruly curls and watery blue eyes sat beside her, balled up and muffling his cries with a forearm stuffed into his mouth.

Mandy stared at him for a moment, dread filling her as her ears suddenly made sense of the conversation from beyond her line of sight. 

_“He’s just a baby, Neil!”_

_“He’s no baby! He’s my son, and—!”_

Mandy winced, closing her eyes for only a second too long, before looking back to the little boy. And, _ugh_ , yes. This had to be exactly who she thought it was, but she still had to check.

“Billy?” She whispered cautiously, and the little boy’s crying stopped, a look of awareness overcoming him. Abruptly, like her voice broke a spell, he blinked, wiping his eyes quickly and sitting up, looking around with a pair of eyes that held too much knowledge for a mere child.

He spotted her, perking up as he unravelled from his tight coil, _“You.”_

The voice that left that child’s mouth was too gruff and deep, and the contrast between a chubby-cheeked child and the deep masculine voice of an older Hargrove had her rearing back, deeply unsettled by the blatant weirdness of it. The sudden movement was enough that the darkness around her blurred into vague colors, and scenes started appearing in a tornado of memories all around her.

Hiding beneath the kitchen table, head between his hands, and hiding under his bed as heavy foot steps rumbled through the house, his father barking his name, and the painful yank of his arm as he was found, every time. His beatings were always worse when he hid, he learned quickly. His father refused to raise a coward, and he had told him so every time as he whacked him across the face with one of his big paws upon finding him. 

His mother’s shouting voice, and the sounds of glass shattering. A woman’s face swimming in his tears as she swung open his bedroom door, a kitchen knife tucked into the waistband of her denim shorts as she swung him up into her arms, holding him tight and bouncing his weight as she snatched him away. She wouldn’t ever leave him, she had always promised, and now _look_. A bitter tinge, and a sour taste left in his mouth that he probably wouldn’t ever get rid of.

A little bit older, but still scrawny and gangly. He always wished to be bigger, stronger, and tougher. A piddly kitchen table with one wobbly leg that he always leaned into when he was angry, which was more often by the day. The one time he sat at that exact table, trying to fill in his vocabulary homework, even against the pain in his head, when his mother appeared from the back door, pausing before storming up to him and grabbing his face. It had always been that way. She saw the bruises, and her sky blue eyes would strain, little red veins appearing in them like cracks on glass. Billy always knew when trouble was coming; his mother’s eyes always told him so. 

Every fight was over him. He was the wrench in the machine. He wished his skin would quit bruising, it was always the thing that gave him away. He could hide the pain, and correct the limping, but the ugly mottled greens and blacks always appeared, and all his work meant nothing after that. His mother would yell and promise she’d make his father regret it, and his father would claim himself above it all, screaming right back at her fearsome form, and then, after the arguing lulled and everyone’s voices became nothing but raw croaks, Billy would fuck up some way again, and it would all start over.

Those early years were cast in shade. Billy Hargrove had been a seedling planted under a dense canopy, far from the sun and rain, and he twisted himself as ugly and gnarled as he had to be to survive. He had reached out for sun, and took all the sad little drops of water that escaped all the big, lumbering tree canopies far above him.

It changed abruptly. He had been so little and weak for so long, and he found his power in the last place he’d ever have expected: Taking a punch. 

There had been a boy two grades above him, and he had been big. In the ecosystem of middle school, he had been the apex predator. He picked on everybody, but it was only Billy’s crazy-ass mom that pulled the bully aside to threaten him. That was another instance of his mother making his suffering only worse. For every fight his mother picked, Billy got the punishment, and he had kind of resigned himself to his lot in life by then. 

Until, one day that changed. His bully spit in his food, and told him to enjoy it, eyeing him expectantly. And Billy had given pause, looking down at the already nearly inedible cafeteria food, before looking up into the ugly face of the boy before him. His father’s voice had entered his mind, fleeting and angry. Talks about respect, of cowardice and what real men were made of, and how Neil Hargrove would never have a bitch for a son. Suddenly, he decided none of this was worth enduring any longer. He stood up, grabbing the tray and shoving it into the boy’s face, telling him to eat it himself. 

A fight broke out, children’s excited, blood-thirsty crows filling the large cafeteria as a crowd of middle schoolers swarmed, forming a circle around Billy and the boy. 

The voices of the mob were so crisp, ringing with pulse-raising clarity, and Mandy could only watch from the outside of the memory, on the blurring fringes of the depressing, beige cafeteria with her arms crossed, almost impressed by the pandemonium these grade-schoolers had stirred up.

“Get him, Billy! Fucking kill him!” 

In the middle of the crowd, they grappled, and it was then, as that boy had punched him square across the face, that Billy figured out just how soft the world had been in comparison to him all along. Everyone oohed as Billy twisted his face back around to look at his assaulter.

“Gonna cry, Hargrove?” The boy asked as Billy spat out a string of crimson saliva, letting the rest of the blood that filled his mouth drip from the corner of his lips all the way down his chin.

The taste had been the only thing that bothered him, but he hadn’t ever been fond of sucking on pennies anyway, and Billy looked around, almost waiting for someone to laugh at the joke. Because it had to have been a joke. That punch had been nothing more than a cotton candy fist into the side of his head—cottony and fluffy, and not even close to the earth-tilting hits he was used to taking. He looked around at everyone’s wide eyes, and he knew then—this _wasn’t_ a joke. The most terroristic boy in school couldn’t even bring a quarter of the hurt his father did, and Billy howled with laughter, teeth bared and stained red, before he hit him back so hard, he swore his head spun all the way around.

That memory, crystalline and so very alive before her eyes, had opened a door inside Hargrove’s mind. The scene went static, flattening and dulling in color, and Mandy looked to the creaking door to her left that was shining like a beacon through the rapidly dimming room.

It opened to a new chapter, not so much shadowy and cold, but rather burning like a slow kindling fire. 

Billy Hargrove had lived in the shade of the titans that birthed him, and now, instead of twisting himself towards the sun for warmth, he decided to catch fire. He became a live-wire, a hot to the touch coil that glowed red with promise to burn. He no longer looked beyond himself to sustain. The world punched, and he refused to hide behind his mother any longer, instead opting to punch back. All his pain and his suffering had finally amounted something, and he weaponized it. When they had dragged him off that bigger boy, he had risen as a different person. He had become an uncontainable force, and he learned a very important fact that day: No pain would ever be enough to topple him. As long as he swung back, all his aches wouldn’t last. Hurting others was the ultimate pain-reliever, and through that, he became unstoppable.

He started acting out. He grew up, grew wild, and only more restlessness had come from it. Boyhood had brought him nothing but grief, and manhood promised all the solutions to his problems. His father had always told him that he’d make him a man, one way or another, and he had started to think he would be right. 

He forced himself away from his mother. He refused to be contained, and refused to be coddled, and she had looked at him in quiet moments, heartbroken for so many reasons he probably would never fully understand. 

His hand rested on the car door handle on a grey, misty morning, and his mother had stopped him before he departed, grabbing his shoulder. 

“I love you, Baby,” She had said, and those words, said with a tender kind of lovingness, made something terrible and ugly rise up in him. 

Mandy sat in the back seat, looking between their two profiles in the warped, colorless memory.

“I’m not a baby, Mom,” Billy complained, nasally and embarrassed for himself in the way only a thirteen year old could be, “Jesus, knock it off with that shit, already.”

And then he opened the car door, exiting the vehicle and stalking off to start his day. Mandy didn’t follow him from this particular memory, staying in the back of his mother’s woody as the heaviness of this moment rested upon her.

This was the moment Billy Hargrove suspected his mother finally gave up on him. He had been a little troll for most of his youth—coming home covered in muck, tearing holes in his pants constantly, and causing trouble in school with teachers—but this was when everything changed. The little scared boy he once was had been crushed under the weight of cruel manhood, and there was no going back from that. He regretted this exact moment, Mandy realized. Maybe, his mind called quiet and remorseful and so very far away, he would only ever be good at ruining things. Maybe she was right to give up. No matter what he did, no matter how perfectly he followed directions, he would always fuck it up.

Mandy wondered if he would ever figure out that the directions he was following were probably the wrong ones.

She moved to the next memories. These were peppered sparsely with visions of his parents, and more saturated with the faces of his peers. Specifically, girls. Lots of girls, and even more plentiful, rejection. Billy took it all in stride. A million losses and a single victory still equated to a win in his mind. All Mandy could do was roll her eyes as she was dragged through the scenes playing out.

A beautiful blue baby for his birthday and a driver’s license turned the world into a new adventure. Losing his virginity in the driver’s seat, and getting dumped by his first girlfriend on an outlook over the ocean as he propped himself up against the trunk. That memory was so fucking abysmal, Mandy couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out of her. A beautiful sunset of orange and pink and purple, and the glowing rays of the sun reflecting all heavenly on the crest of each ocean wave, and fucking Billy Hargrove getting broken up with, overlooking it all. He hadn’t even been sad about it, really, just completely blindsided. He had thought he was too good for the brunette he had decided to start dating back then—had thought she was a _safe_ option—and she ended up dumping him! God, Mandy snorted to herself, he was such a fucking dick, even then, and he really deserved that one.

Making friends, and carving out a space for himself in the high school hierarchy. He was never rich enough to be cool, so he had resorted to sports to make friends. He was good at everything, because he never quit until he was the best. He wormed himself up to semi-popularity through hard work and kicking the ass of anyone who opposed him. These memories showed her more visions of Californian beaches, and brightly colored swim trunks, and tan girls in hypnotizing bikinis that he and his gross little jock friends would groan over as they walked past. Billy had loved the beach for a while, it seemed.

In a particular memory, the sun hadn’t shone so bright, though. The sand felt a little colder, and he had sat himself away from all the fun in the sun, plopping onto his ass under a pier with only himself for company. 

That seemed to be the pattern. When Billy Hargrove felt any icky, creeping sensations, he found a dark space and made himself small. Going from his time in closets, and under beds and tables, he had only evolved in the places that people could see. Whenever things got ugly, he still ran and hid. Only, he eventually became too big for dark closets and tables, and decided to hop into his car to get away instead. 

This particular day, he had opted for solitude in the shadowy overhang of the boardwalk. Girlish screams cut through the air as a rollercoaster rumbled overhead, rattling the wood planks above him.

Mandy stood off to the side, arms crossed as she watched him from afar, only slightly blinded by the California sun. He sat in a pair of swimming trunks and a sleeveless shirt, hunched over with his elbows leaning into his knees. The sunglasses over his eyes were probably the reason she hadn’t noticed the fact that he could actually see her.

“Can I help you?” He called out dryly, brows raising from behind his blackout sunglasses, and Mandy froze, horrified, before whipping around to make sure no one was behind her. There wasn’t anyone in sight, and she slowly turned back around, eyes wide as she pointed a single index finger at her own chest. His brows rose higher, and he took off his sunglasses to gesture to her with them, “Yeah, you. You’ve been standing there for a while. You lost?”

Oh, Mandy thought to herself wryly, if only he fucking knew just how much.

“Uh,” She took a hesitant step forward, her shoulders raising awkwardly into her ears, “If I say yes, will you let me sit with you for a while?”

He grinned, laughing in a way that was a little more subdued than she was used to, before waving her over magnanimously, “For a pretty thing like you? Sure thing, Princess. You gotta name by the way?”

God, this was so weird. Everything from the softer lines of his face to his almost genial tone, all the way to the almost endearing way he called her Princess, was so completely _off._ This Billy Hargrove wasn’t nearly as blackened and bitter as the one she knew. He sat a little tanner and with a smile a little less toothy, and the world seemed like maybe it would be okay. 

And that was just so _wrong_. Mandy looked around suspiciously for anything nefarious that may have been sneaking up on her. Her paranoia was coming out swinging, and she couldn’t help but swerve her head around as she cautiously trudged towards Hargrove’s half-reclined form, kicking up sand the entire way. By the time she was nearing him, finally finding her stride through her sinking steps, the friendlier and noticeably tanner Billy Hargrove was cocking his head.

“Hey,” He said suddenly, pointing to her again with the arm of his sunglasses, “I, uh—I know you from somewhere, right? Did you just start school around here?”

Mandy paused, blinking bewilderedly. Was this Billy from this memory, like, remembering her from his more recent memories? What a thought. Mandy paused, her mind now churning with possibilities. Or maybe, she thought suddenly, this was the real Billy, trapped in his own memories, and that was why he could remember her from school, but not seem to piece together where she fit in this memory. 

Then, an epiphany hit her: Maybe Billy Hargrove wasn’t trapped in his head, but rather, his own memories. This whole time Mandy had thought she was sorting through his mind until she found the dark space he had somehow fallen into, but maybe she was merely following him towards the surface of his consciousness as he struggled to break free on his own.

Huh, Mandy squinted at that, looking for a reason why that couldn’t be possible. Was anything even impossible anymore? She really didn’t know.

“No,” Mandy shook her head in reply, stepping up and sitting down a few feet beside him. Billy merely hummed, eyes narrowed as he slipped his sunglasses atop his eyes once more. Mandy watched him silently. She knew that move by now. He put on his sunglasses so he could stare at her without being called on it. Mandy wanted to sigh. There was no way this memory could have been more than a year old. Regardless of how different he seemed in all the other ways he was, this Billy was just too similarly conniving to the one she knew now.

He played it cool, nodding, “So you’re out here on vacation then?”

Mandy bit her lip, “Uh, yeah. Kind of.”

“Oh, yeah? What’d you say your name was, again?” He asked, unable to hide his painfully apparent curiosity. 

She wasn’t sure if she was meant to lie. She hesitated for less than a breath before answering as unassumingly as she could manage, “Mandy.”

He nodded a few too many times to be casual, obviously mulling over her words.

“Mandy,” He repeated, looking at her from over his sunglasses in a way that he thought was meant to be charming and playful, but Mandy could see the cloud of hazy, half-baked thoughts busying his mind, “That’s a cute little name, Mandy-Pandy.”

Something about her name clicked like the right key in a lock within the confines of his mind. It rang way too familiar for his comfort, and he knew he had to place her somewhere in his memories. He wanted to get her nice and comfortable and figure out the mystery of just who she was, and the only way he knew how to do that was through the cute little dog and pony act he had. Be sweet, give a compliment, and smile a little. Get her to laugh, and then get her to spill. 

Mandy couldn’t help the way she smiled when she realized his futile plan, huffing out a breath of amusement and looking away briefly. She knew he couldn’t have remembered her then; he would have definitely known that would trick never work on her. She stilled a moment, taking in the distant game of soccer happening further up on the beach and noticing the fashionable little neon shorts the girls were wearing, before she was turning back to him tentatively, nearly hiding half her face in her shoulder as she tilted her head to ask, “Billy, what year is it?”

He didn’t seem fazed by the fact that she somehow knew his name, and that was another reminder that none of this was real. No matter how bright the sun, and how pungent the smell of sea-spray was, this was still the inside of Hargrove’s mind. There was no stretch of reality where meticulous devil, Billy Hargrove, could ever miss such a glaringly obvious discrepancy.

“You a time traveler, or something?” He laughed, seeming to struggle to remain nice and light-hearted as he finally answered plainly, “1984, obviously.”

Mandy looked at her own twin reflections in his glasses, pursing her lips, “What month?”

He stilled, wincing for a moment before cocking his head to the side, muttering to himself, “I, uh—huh, I’m not sure. Can’t remember.”

He pushed his glasses up his face and rubbed his eyes, cursing as an ache creeped into his cranium. The crisp smell of sea water and fried food from the pier faded into the acrid scent of cigarette ash and dull tap water, and as Mandy reached out to him, the sun promptly shut off, the sounds of excitement and amusement abruptly slipping away to be replaced by a hollow silence.

He pulled his hand from his face, eyes startlingly morose in the moment he caught her gaze in that dim space between their faces.

“This isn’t real, is it, Queenie?”

His words felt like an ocean tide rising over her head, cold and frightening and suffocating, and as she blinked, the scene disappeared completely. The warmth of the sun, and the smell of the ocean, and Billy’s familiar face all left, leaving Mandy crouched on a cold, inky floor, her feet and ankles slowly seeping into an endless pool of frigid, murky water.

The darkness stretched on, stark and mute, and Mandy could only stand, looking all around her into the endless stretch of nothingness. It was such a sudden contrast to the hazardous fullness of Hargrove’s mind that she nearly ached with loss. For a moment, the emptiness frightened her, and she forgot herself. She felt hazy and lost, the dark blurring all the details of who she was until she felt like she may fade away into nothing at all.

“Wake up, Mandy!” A distant voice called, and Mandy jolted, her spine feeling like a xylophone being played as her bones rattled at the sound of her name, awakening her in a way that had her straightening and flapping away the darkness she nearly disappeared into. 

“Oh, my God! Mandy, please—! Mandy!!”

The pitchy, shrieking call of her name was like the dinging light of an idea, illuminating the inside of her brain like the sun peeking over a horizon. She had been inside Billy Hargrove’s mind, she reminded herself, and now, she looked around confusedly, she was no longer there. She wasn’t even sure how she got to where she was, but she knew she probably needed to get back to her body before long. If she refused to call from her bones, she was likely to zap her body into this void, never to return.

The world flew by her in zooming lines, stretching from streaks of light to whizzing blurs of color, until she was shaking at the sudden cold that enveloped her, and she was gasping as she shot upright at the biting sensation crawling across her skin. 

Bright blue eyes, constellations of freckles, and a curtain of auburn hair obscured anything else from her vision, and Maxine Mayfield shrieked as she narrowly avoided being head-butted.

A splash sounded as she flopped to the ground outside the tub, and Mandy’s gaze jumped around in search of Eleven instinctively, but the girl was nowhere to be found.

“Mandy—!” Max began, voice almost coming out as screech as she pointed vehemently to the ceiling, “The lights all went out—! And-and-and I tried to get you—! But then the door was locked—! And now the sink’s overflowing—! Oh, my God!! Everything’s going totally haywire!!!”

Mandy rubbed the back of her head, sneering as she looked around the room through the strobing lights, “Cripes, Max, lower your voice.”

“This is—!” Max cried out as she splashed around to balance back on her knees on the outside of the tub Mandy was currently half-sprawled in, “I’m scared, okay!? I think— _ugh, I don’t know!_ —the fuse box might have gone out, and Billy’s still not awake, and—!”

Her frenetic energy had Mandy straightening, rubbing away her grogginess and trying to will away her bleary-eyed confusion as she sat up, tucking her knees under her as she pushed herself into standing. Max was right, the power seemed to be out, and the entire bathroom was casted in skulking, shuddering shadows now. As Mandy stepped from the tub with a clamor of her sneakers against the porcelain, the lights flickered erratically once more, flashing across her vision in a way that tricked her eyes into thinking that the tiles along the floor had been covered with tendrils of slippery blackness. Mandy tentatively toed her shoe across the tile, and encountered nothing in the dark, though.

“It’s fine, Max,” She declared as she pawed gently at the air, sightlessly looking for the top of Max’s head to pat condescendingly. She didn’t find it, and inevitably gave up, instead trying to groggily stumble towards the still-running sink, “I’m sure the power company is working on it, okay?”

She found the edge of the sink, gasping the edges until she reached the knob, turning it with a squeak, only for the sink to keep running. She paused in the dead silence, listening to only the howling of the wind outside.

“I already tried that,” Max said, her voice small and uneasy.

Mandy hummed, trying to turn the knob the other way, and that didn’t work either, so she searched for the other faucet handle, turning that one in a near-endless cranking, until a sharp squealing sounded, and the water flow abruptly stopped.

“See?” Mandy said, giving a breathless exhale of relief as she eased the tension from her shoulders, “It’s off. No big deal.”

It was a big deal, though. In the silence the faucet left behind, Max and Mandy finally heard it.

Curious, lilting chittering.

* * *

Everything felt off-kilter. The world was seemed to be at a curiously sideways slant currently, and Max kind of felt like she had fallen headfirst into a real-life, black and white episode of The Twilight Zone.

Getting caught in a slim to none chance, Billy blacking out after a confrontation with Steve Harrington, and Mandy Mueller appearing like a wrecking ball into an already catastrophic situation, and being driven home like nothing was wrong after all of that with the near-lifeless body of her stepbrother in the back seat, and now _this._

The lights flickered as Max righted the Christmas tree, her hands still grasping it around the trunk like she was readying to strangle it. Max gave pause as she looked around confusedly. The lights had gone out so briefly, she almost thought she was imagining things, until she moved to plug the lights in as the sun was setting, and the entire house plunged suddenly into darkness while she was bent over, ass up and reaching for the outlet. 

Max reared back from her handiwork, assuming she must have accidentally blown a fuse in their new house by plugging in the string of bulbs. That had to be the reason, Max asserted. It was the only logical conclusion. This may have been one of the weirder days of her life, but normal inconveniences still happened, and she acted on that thought, moving towards the circuit box in the garage with blundering steps in the near pitch-black. 

Her deck shoes met the carpet in soft pats as she walked down the hallway, her hands glancing the walls on either side of her as she navigated sightlessly through her house. As she passed the bathroom Mueller disappeared into, she paused, raising her hand to knock on the door before freezing, her ears suddenly picking up on a strange sound. 

It sounded like movement, Max realized as she squinted into the dark, cocking her ear towards the sound. Like a squelching, wet-sock kind of sound. As if someone had been drenched in water and set sopping wet into her kitchen to rummage around. 

Max didn’t like that. She really, _really_ did not like that sound. It maybe, kinda-sorta sounded like those ugly demo-dogs that Dart grew into, only much fatter. Like maybe _‘Jabba the Hutt’_ fat, actually. But, Max reasoned, even if that escaped demo-dog might have been running through the woods, it didn’t know how to open _doors_. So certainly there was no reason to be scared. That would have been, like, embarrassing, anyway. The lights cut out, and all of a sudden her mind thinks a monster’s in her house? Yeah, right. Max wasn’t afraid of random sounds in the dark. At thirteen, who even was, right? Only babies allowed their imaginations to get the best of them in the dark, and Max was totally not a baby.

But, regardless, Max took a detour into the bathroom. The door didn’t open initially, so her fingers fluttered to her trusted bobby-pin instinctively as she went to jimmy the lock open. All the years of practice had paid off, and all those locks she had threaded as she learned had not been wasted as she got in the door in under fifteen seconds. 

Through the darkness, she didn’t immediately notice anything wrong. But once she stumbled through the threshold, closing the door a little too fast to be as silent as she would have liked, it became noticeable. No angry shouts about privacy or shrilly exclaimed inquiries as to how she got in sounded, and Mandy Mueller didn’t seem to be anywhere around. The only sound that met Max’s ears within the small bathroom was that of the sink as water gurgled from the faucet.

And then she noticed the way each of her footsteps echoed with a splash. The entire floor was covered in water! Max hustled to the sink, cranking at the faucet handle in a fruitless attempt to stop the water flow. It had no effect on the gush of water, and she picked that exact moment to panic. 

Everything was going wrong! Billy was pulling a Sleeping Beauty routine on everyone, Mueller, the only pseudo-adult who seemed to have any semblance of control on the situation, had up and disappeared once the lights went out, and now, the sink was clogged and flooding the entire bathroom! Max was in the deepest shit of all her young life!!

Mid-meltdown, with her hands scraping through her hair, Max finally found Mueller. Mueller’s grumbling, whiny tone sounded within the small space unintelligibly, and Max floundered, whipping her head around in search for the girl. She waved her arms through the air in every direction, coming up empty handed until her hands met the shower curtain, and she yanked it open with a rustle of plastic and a metallic scrape, spotting her crumpled form. The blonde was laid out inside the tub, body illuminated in an unearthly blue glow from the slim window high on the wall, her neck craned back at an awkward angle and her knees knocked to the side. 

Max reeled back, hands flying to her mouth as she withheld from screaming at the blueish, distinctly unnatural hue Mandy’s face was cast in. She looked dead! Literally _dead!!_ Max didn’t even hesitate as she leaned over the tub and ogled her face openly, before reaching towards her and shaking her awkwardly contorted shoulder in hopes that it would wake her. She had to be alive, regardless of how strangely blue she appeared in the bleak light. 

“Wake up,” Max muttered anxiously as she shook her roughly now, fingers digging into the whispering polyester fabric of Mueller’s windbreaker as her voice raised, “C’mon, already!”

At the sound she made, pitchy and panicked, the lights flashed above her head before plummeting into darkness again, and Max couldn’t help the nervous moan that left her as she used both hands to shake Mueller now.

“Wake up, Mandy!” She screamed as the lights continued to flicker at uneven intervals.

She was officially panicking, she realized. She even wished for Billy to be here, awake and alive, because even he was better than facing this nightmare situation alone. 

“Oh, my god!” She all but sobbed, feeling overwhelmingly hysterical as the lights began to pop overhead, strobing violently and leaving her eyes flashing with starbursts of color. Max squeezed her eyes shut against the burning of her retinas, shaking Mueller desperately and wailing a little pathetically even in her own opinion, “Mandy, please—! Mandy!!”

A distant gurgle, and a warmth flooding through her and driving out a cold she hadn’t even realized had settled in, and then Mueller was wheezing back to life, rising up like a vampire from a coffin, and Max collapsed from relief and bewilderment, splashing in the growing puddle on the floor.

“Mandy, the lights went out, and—! And-and then—“ Max had to violently hold herself back from rambling about alien monsters her friends unleashed upon the town, instead continuing to shout out ominous half-sentences like a crazy person, “I tried to get you, but then the door was locked—! And now the sink’s overflowing—Oh, my God!! Everything’s going totally haywire!!!” 

For all of Max’s trouble, all Mandy did was slur out tiredly in return, “Cripes, Max, lower your voice.”

Max wanted to scream. She was actually ready to burst! She was in the middle of a crisis, and Mandy Mueller had the audacity to act like her beauty sleep was being interrupted! 

“This is—!” Serious, she wanted to say. Please, just act like some of this was off, for once. Mandy Mueller took the weird in stride and made no mentions of the horrific and terrible; all she did was just face it head on, and Max couldn’t bear it. She needed someone to freak out! Make her feel like she wasn’t being a dramatic wuss! Because Hawkins, Indiana had been nothing but a roller coaster ride since day one, and Max was slowly unravelling at the seams. The Party acted like this was all normal—like monsters had never been mere fairy tales—and Max was progressively losing her sense of reality. She was here, after all, in the middle of a dark house, worrying over the possibility of monsters being real and coming to get her. 

And it seemed to be very possible, after all. 

Mueller was at the sink, turning off the running water with a squeak when both girls heard it. A rotten wheezing sound that was much too close to giggling for Max’s taste. The sound of it had her hair raising, and her shoulders raising towards her ears as she coiled up tight. And she knew Mueller had heard it, too, because the girl took one last sharp, audible inhale, and suddenly, the room became a vacuum, ringing with deafening emptiness. 

For a beat too long, they stood silently in that small bathroom, enveloped in darkness and so still not even their breaths dared to move, before a loud thud sounded against the wall and the mirror cabinet door swung open, shattering against the towel rack. Max let out a meep, nearly jumping out of her skin as her hands flew up to her mouth to muffle the sound she made. In reply, the lights started up again, throaty gargles sounding from beyond the four walls that protected them. Suddenly, hands were on her, and Max let out a small scream at the abruptness of the touch in the pitch blackness, before burning fingers were clamping over her mouth, and a soft breath was gusting across her brow.

“Max,” Mandy Mueller’s quiet, careful voice said through the blanket of darkness between them, “Don’t make a sound.”

Slowly and deliberately, Mueller’s hand lifted, and Max stayed soundless, lips fully clamped shut.

“Stay behind me,” Mandy commanded, her voice soft and airy as she whispered near the side of her head, “Got it?”

Max nodded wordlessly, before suspecting she wouldn’t be able to see her through the dark, adding just under her breath, “Yeah.”

A lighter flicked to life before her eyes, and Mandy Mueller’s face startled her just by its proximity. Max reeled back slightly, and Mandy nodded solemnly, before she gingerly reached towards the open cabinet above the sink, fingers just grazing a purple tin cylinder as another pound on the walls sounded, making her openly cringe. She pulled down the aerosol can warily, finger immediately moving to the nozzle as she tested it, squeezing down. A quick spray of Aqua Net released from the can, and Mandy rose her brows, one half of her lips quirking to the side.

Her eyes jumped back onto Max, who had been watching her scrupulously, “Behind me.”

Max looked down at the hairspray suspiciously, before looking back up at her frighteningly alive eyes, “Why?”

Mandy nodded without answering, gaze locked on her and beseeching her to understand, “Behind.”

Max’s brow knitted with concern. This was not going to be good, she already knew. Max instinctively reached for the wooden handle of the plunger along the side of the toilet. Oh, _shit_ , she thought miserably as the levity of the situation settled on her mind. She was really about to follow Mandy Mueller out into the dark to face down with a big, ugly, slime monster.

Mueller moved to the door, her left arm holding the small plastic lighter as far from her body as possible, while her right clenched at the Aqua Net can, and Max followed her every step like a terrified shadow, peeking over the girl’s shoulder towards the abyss before them the entire time. Mueller reached for the door knob, turning it with a squeak, before nudging it open and letting the wood swing away slowly with a long horrible, deafening squeal of the hinge. Both girls held their breath as the house was plunged into silence once more, before Mueller was hissing under her breath, _“Fuck.”_

Max couldn’t help but notice how high Mueller’s voice was, and cringed at the sound. Oh, _God,_ she thought suddenly, they were both helpless and sure to die!

The hand clenching her improvised weapon started to shake, before suddenly going numb as an explosion of noise sounded; a great crashing clatter, and then a shrieking roar, and the sounds of claws scraping and scratching and tearing through nondescript things somewhere in black shroud that laid beyond the light of Mueller’s flickering lighter. As quick as the noise sounded, growing louder and closer, Mandy’s right arm whipped up, the fizzing hiss of the hairspray can meeting Max’s ears as fire blossomed before her eyes. The plume of fire grew, whooshing to life and illuminating the scene in a warm, saturating orange hue that burned stark against the shadows that enveloped them, serving as a blatant reminder to Max that she was currently living a nightmare.

A huge, bear-sized demo-dog was before her, rearing back and squealing as it caught fire, skin crackling as it dropped and withered, attempting to scamper away from Mueller. Max’s eyes got so big she swore they were ready to fall right out of her skull. As Mandy followed it, spraying bursts of weaponized flame upon the beast while it shrieked and writhed on the ground in a blackening heap of vaguely green, mucous skin, Max followed thoughtlessly, eyes glued onto the scene. 

She couldn’t believe it. Dustin had said that Dart had molted, growing from a pollywog to a fully terrestrial animal, but Max had thought it stopped growing once it reached dog-sized! This thing was easily eight feet tall! _Eight feet!!_ Its body wasn’t quite bipedal from what she could see, and it scampered around like a hunched, decrepit circus bear, hairless and sickly, on all four of its clawed feet. But when Mueller had it backed up into the living room, blasting plumes of hungry fire in its direction, it had rose up, shrieking and snarling in the face of Mueller’s assault as its skin still cooked, acrid and pungent, and Max had seen all of it then.

Monstrous and yucky, with slimy skin shining in the dim, fiery light, Max could make out its outline, and its previously obscured form went from circus bear to almost humanoid once it stood to its full height. Max recoiled from it, but Mandy Mueller lashed out with her leg, kicking it right onto its back with a godless fearlessness that Max both envied and revered. It collapsed, leaving the floor shuddering, even as Mueller tromped over with sure steps, stopping before it and spraying a long breath of fire upon the monster as it wailed and writhed, squealing as it hunched low and attempted to lash out against her assault.

It missed once, and then twice as it squirmed on the ground like an ant frying under a child’s magnifying glass, but the third time, even as Mueller had avoided the swipe it took at her, it ended up catching the girl’s legs with a strange, oily, lizard-like appendage, making her nearly collapse sideways, flailing as the stream of flames shot wildly through the air towards the ceiling. Max gave a little scream as she ducked beneath the scorching heat that nearly caught her head, and Mandy gave a matching cry as she wound up on the ground, her lighter hopelessly lost in the dark. 

Plunged into darkness again, Max strained to see beyond the bright orange flames that licked across the slick, viscous skin of the monster as it clawed its way across the floor in pain. Mueller cursed loudly, her pitchy voice coming out strangled and struggling as the wailing cry of the monster cut through the dim space.

“Max—!” Mandy’s voice cried out, and Max moved to action, her blood zooming in her veins as she realized Mandy Mueller _actually_ needed her help. She blindly smacked at the back of the monster, screaming the entire time as the rubber head of her weaponized plunger bounced and boinged uselessly against its leathery hide.

“Fuck, Max! Follow through with your swing!!” Mueller’s voice called again, frenetic and warbling as she wailed at the top of her lungs. Max swung again, this time with both hands on the handle, whacking the monster in the side of the head just as it turned on her, slinking away from its spot pinning Mandy to the ground.

“Oh, _shiiiiiiiiiit!!!_ ” Max screeched out in a long stream of air, her voice rising high in her throat as the monster rose up, opening its barbed mouth and releasing a noxious roar that Max could smell as its putrid breath gusted across her face.

Max didn’t know what to do once she finished screaming in the face of the monster that was sure to eat her, so she wielded her plunger like a spear in her right hand, shoving it up and suctioning it right over the monster’s mouth as it went to open again, certainly to attempt to devour her. It let out a muffle squeal as it tumbled backwards, and Max was frozen in disbelief at what she had just managed to do, arms hanging limp at her sides as the monster struggled, crashing through furniture in the dark.

The thing that broke her out of her stupor ended up being Mandy’s hands dragging her out of the room, yanking her so hard she was sure her arm would be sore. She frantically swerved through the house, moving back towards the bathroom they had first appeared out of and passing it. Max only belatedly realized she was moving back to Billy’s room further down the hall when she slammed into the wood and pushed it open, only to run headlong into Billy’s hulking, upright form.

“Jesus!” Billy barked, struggling to remain upright as he grabbed at Mueller’s upper arms, looking into her face with disconcerted frown, “What the hell is the hurry, huh?”

Mandy’s eyes nearly crossed as she looked up at him, plastered to his chest, and Max blinked at the sudden light that filled the room. Her head whipped around, taking in the shining yellow bulb overhead, before noticing the lull of rock music that filled the room from Billy’s small TV set. 

He had electricity. Max spun around to look out into the hall, and yeah, the hall light was on there, too, even though she was positive it definitely hadn’t been mere moments previous. She felt suddenly wooden. No more darkness, and no more warbling, hungry, monster-sized demo-dogs roaring and squealing from the living room. 

What the hell? Did any of that really happen? 

Max looked to Mandy, taking in her suddenly ashen complexion and her frazzled demeanor. Her hands trembled as she felt along the planes of Billy’s chest, grabbing at the fabric of his t-shirt and fingering it confusedly. And Max knew then, as the girl stumbled back from Billy’s front, looking a little rickety as she clutched him for support, that it had to have been real. Mandy Mueller would never look to her stepbrother for support.

Mandy’s eyelids fluttered as she shakily gestured to her own face, rasping out through a broken voice box, “Y-you’re bleeding.”

And he was, Max noted. From his nose all the way to his chin, a thick waterfall of blood ran. Billy blinked briefly, brows lowering slightly on his face as he reached up to the location Mueller specified, wiping above his mouth and coming back with a smear of crimson red blood. He cursed under his breath, pushing through Mueller’s flimsy form, before moving around Max towards the hall.

“Wait—!” Max couldn’t help but cry out, her mind still a little frayed from her encounter in the dark, and Billy scoffed, shrugging her off as he moved through the now silent house with great lumbering steps. 

She heard the bathroom door open beyond her line of sight, and looked helplessly to Mueller, who stood before her, gaze deadpan and hollow. With a hard blink, Mandy’s brows rose as she locked her eyes onto Max, her expression trained into indifference once more.

“Well, looks like he’s awake,” She announced unnecessarily, and Max’s eyes narrowed in reply, her mouth opening to hiss out an accusation as to what they just saw, before Billy’s voice was bellowing over her chance to reply.

“Max, what the fuck happened to the Christmas tree?!”

Both of them paused, before hustling out into the living room to spot the cause of his alarm. 

In the middle of the living room was a toppled tree crackling with embers of a low fire, the floor around it littered with pine needles, and broken glass bobbles, and a strange assortment of haphazardly discarded items: a single can of Aqua Net, a cheap plastic lighter, and a plunger with a splintered handle.

Max and Mandy froze on the spot, wide eyed as Billy stomped out the last flickers of flame, tossing his arms out in a confused, expectant gesture.

Max said nothing, and Mueller cleared her throat from beside her, raising a single index finger as she said, “Okay, so before you freak—I can fix this.”

* * *

Everything appeared to be normal. The warm glow of Christmas lights, and an unscathed pine tree stood proud and stoic in the corner of the living room, visible through the front window of the house.

Mandy Mueller had righted the tree, peeked into a suspiciously unchanged bathroom—no overflowing sink or broken mirror in sight—to return a hairspray can and plunger to their rightful homes, and untangled all the Christmas lights in record time. She flew through the motions of gathering all the whole ornaments as she rearranged them onto the tree mindlessly. When she was finally through, she paused, looking to the mess left on the floor of the fight she just had with a monster that may have not even existed in the first place.

Her adrenaline left her, and with it, a slow coldness creeped into her bones. 

She wouldn’t think about it, she decided, and she turned towards the kitchen, steps heavier than she intended as she stopped in the mouth of the room.

“Where’s your broom?” She asked Hargrove as he stood over the kitchen sink with a wad of paper towels in his hands, facing away from her.

He looked over his shoulder, and his bloodied face came to view, making her wince at the uneven copper smudges that marred his skin.

“Closet,” Came his nasally, muffled reply as he jerked his head across the room. 

Mandy moved towards the closet, swinging it open and pulling out the broom and pan, before moving back to the living room. As she was leaving, she encountered Max and gave pause as the girl attempted to swerve around her. The little redhead had done an entire sweep of the house, and had managed to come back right to where she started, and Mandy wordlessly stepped in front of her again, halting her from entering the kitchen.

“Go clean up the rest of the mess in the living room,” Mandy commanded starkly, and Max rose her brows in silent challenge, making Mandy assert more firmly as she shoved the broom into Max’s face, “And once you’re done, Maxie, make sure you vacuum. Thanks, you’re a star.”

Max’s expression fell as she took the broom and pan, giving a beleaguered groan as she spun on her heel and abandoned the kitchen. 

Once she was gone, Mandy closed her eyes and took a deep breath to steady herself, before turning back towards Hargrove and carefully trekking over to his form leaning over the sink. She stopped by his side, settling her hip against the countertop as she turned her body to fully face his profile.

“Here,” She waved her flexing finger in his face expectantly, “Let me.”

He glanced in her direction uneasily, spitting out a syrupy string of blood, before turning towards her and handing her another napkin. 

She took it, struggling to meet his gaze evenly as he turned 90 degrees to face her. Her hand shook a little as she wiped at the line of blood streaking across his skin. For every swipe she made to remove it, only more red droplets rolled down, and she stared at the space above his lips with a tight expression. 

She wasn’t sure if violently knocking him out or if rummaging around through his brain cortex and messing around in his memories was the cause of this, but either way, she deeply suspected all of this blood coming from his nose was probably her doing in some way. God, Mandy thought bleakly to herself, if Billy Hargrove died in his sleep after all the shit she went through for him today, that would just take the cake.

“So,” He began, and Mandy’s eyes jumped towards his, “I, uh—“

She rose her brows, taking a sharp inhale. He hadn’t noticed the horrifically guilty look she was sure to be sporting, had he?

“I, uh,” He nodded to himself, looking just beyond her shoulder, before turning his attention back onto her, “I don’t usually—shit, I don’t know what the fuck I’m trying to say—”

Mandy said nothing as he talked through his thought process, and eventually, Billy pinched the bridge of his nose and gave a nasally sigh.

“I was a dick earlier.”

Mandy blinked, “What?”

That was the exact wrong response, and he immediately tried to pull away, only for Mandy to grab at him, hand fluttering against his arm as she tried to keep the towel to his face. He stayed put, brows knitting in the middle of his face as he gave a heavy exhale that had more blood bubbling from his nose.

“To you,” He muttered despondently, expanding almost shyly, “I was a dick to you.”

Mandy nodded, giving a slight shrug as she tried to wave off this weird, pseudo-apology he was trying to give her, “I-it’s fine, Hargrove. Don’t make a big deal out fo it.”

His gaze went far off from a moment, blue eyes catching in the dim amber light, “You took me home?”

It came out as a question, and Mandy tried to shake her head in denial, only to end up shrugging again as she announced stupidly, refusing to look into his gaze now, “Well, I mean, who else was gonna?”

“And you drove Max home, too,” Hargrove continued, voice softer now, “In my car?”

Oh, no. Mandy bit her lip, focusing her attention on the stream of blood coming from his nose that didn’t seem to be stopping any time soon. This conversation was too much for her in the moment. She had just navigated his terrible childhood, and woke up to face a fucking man-eating alien monster, and now had to deal with Billy Hargrove’s soft, rasping voice as he tried to be a fucking nice guy for once. She felt like she was going to crumble under the stress his heavy gaze put on her.

“It’s not stopping,” She mumbled distractedly, wiping at his face a little harder in her frazzled state, “I think you’re gonna die, Hargrove.”

He merely smirked, letting out a snort of congested laughter as he reached up and took the bloodied paper towels from her hands, his touch much gentler than Mandy would have preferred. She just fucking mind-raped him this afternoon! Why was he being nice to her _now?!_ This was quite possibly the worst punishment she could ever face for her crimes.

He tossed the red-stained paper into the trash and looked to her once again, “And then you waited for me to wake up?”

Ugh! Mandy hated that he was saying all these facts like he was merely asking her! Yes, okay?! She wanted scream her guilt from he rooftops. She felt bad for nearly killing him, so she fucking drove him home, and tucked him into bed, and then went into the bathroom for a little mental breakdown, before deciding to just take a fun little tour on the inside of his mind! None of those things meant anything close to what he thought they did, and Mandy truly abhorred the implication Hargrove was trying to make right now.

She couldn’t help herself. She was feeling cornered and flighty and angry about everything, so she turned to playing offense, “Do you remember anything else besides being a dick to me?”

That got him to pause, and Mandy could see something spark to life behind his eyes. He did remember something, but he couldn’t put it to words. Something was off, subtly and barely, like a piece of furniture moved an inch to the left. His mind could sense the ghost of her intrusion. It was like she opened him up, and didn’t quite turn his lid all the way back on as she left. 

Instead of voicing any of that, he said instead, “I kicked Harrington’s ass, didn’t I?”

Mandy let out a sigh, rolling her eyes as she placed a hand to her temple tiredly, “I don’t know, honestly. Probably.”

He nodded more firmly, the angle of his brows lowering, “He was with my stepsister.”

Mandy gave a miserable shrug, “I wouldn’t know anything about it. I was busy being robbed.”

That got his attention, and Billy’s brows jumped slightly as he looked back to her, “By those kids?”

She could hear the laughter within his mind and scowled, looking away with what little self—respect she had left, and then he laughed outright, “You were! Oh, Queenie, and I thought my luck was bad. A car and a bike in the same week. If you’re not careful, it’ll be your shoes next!”

Mandy closed her eyes briefly. Why had she ever been worried about stupid Billy Hargrove waking up? She was a masochist.

“Glad that amuses you, Billy-boy,” Mandy snarked drolly as she shot him an unimpressed look, and Billy wiggled his brows in reply, smiling his toothy smile at her through the stain of blood on his face. Her lips curled in disgust, “Don’t fucking look at me like that with all that blood on your face, you freak.”

His tongue poked out to take a long swipe of the blood on his upper lip, “Mm, tastes kinda good, wanna try?”

Mandy gagged, jerking away from him, “Ugh! You’re so gross!! Bleed out and die already!”

His booming laughter followed, and Mandy shook her head as she watched him, not nearly as repelled by the sound as she once was.


	24. A Lie, a Truth, and a Big Problem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We've landed somewhere between Thin Ice and Hot Water, Folks, and it is inhospitable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S BEEN THREE (3!!!!) MONTHS. omfg i'm so sorry guys!! i'm a fucking human garbage bag who shuts down mentally at any small inconvenience tbh lmao. the abridged version of why is: I'm moving across the country soon!! and literally everything in my life is CHANGING(!!!!!!!!)!!! tbh it's happening at an insane, break-neck speed and i'm just holding on for dear life at this point, so i've kinda been having a hard time w/ sitting down, unwinding, and focusing on writing lately. I've been feeling p crummy about that lately, so I cranked this chap out w/out rly proof-reading or thinking too hard about it (or else I'll second guess myself b/c i always obsess over the dumbest stuff fdjskbjks) so if there are a bunch of flaws in this chapter... lol.... listen, okay, i'm trying... which should prob be a lil embarrassing for me tbh but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ i've committed now. this fanfic ain't ending til the fat lady sings, babies!! no matter how delayed my posts, they WILL come eventually!!
> 
> ALSO, P.S. i can't believe all the sweet messages i returned to!!!! omg, you guys are so AMAZING honestly!! i have read them all now, and i'm def gonna reply soon (like, i know i said that a while ago, but I'M SERIOUS this time lol) i'm not ignoring y'all, I SWEAR, i'm literally just slow and overwhelmed so pls don't hate me, i'm sorry!! in a bid for forgiveness, I have left in more Billy/Mandy interactions that i was def planning to scrap (like... my finished draft was literally gonna have no billy in this chap lmaoajedbsjkafbjk) b/c you guys actually like it when they're kinda fighty/flirty???? i think??? D: 
> 
> as usual, ily all!!! you guys are my continued inspiration <3

So, Max Mayfield thought to herself, this was what going crazy felt like.

The vacuum roared and crackled as she pushed it over the shattered glass baubles on the carpet. Mindlessly, her eyes roamed around to room, looking for any more signs of that monster, but there were none. No scorch marks from Mueller’s make-shift flame-thrower, and no scratches or holes in the walls, and even more bewildering, not even too much damage done to the Christmas tree. Propped back up, it was only short a few ornaments, and Max couldn’t even spy a single broken branch. 

It was like none of it happened, and if it hadn’t been for that starstruck, slack-jawed expression on Mueller’s face as the two of them stumbled into Billy’s brightly lit room, Max would have been sure it was all some waking dream fabricated by her excitable imagination, or whatever. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Mandy Mueller, Max would have probably died at the hands of that now-nonexistent monster, and nobody would have known how it all went down. Ugh, Max wanted to grab at her head and rip out her hair in frustration over this entire impossible situation, but instead, she grabbed the electrical chord and ripped it out of the wall with a rubbery snap, effectively shutting up the whine of the vacuum and letting a ringing silence fall over the house once more. 

When she turned to drag the vacuum back to its home in the hallway closet, she paused, spying her stepbrother and Mandy Mueller filing out of the kitchen, before Billy was parting from her with a call of, “I’ll just be a sec.”

Mandy merely waved him off tiredly, before crossing her arms as she watched him strut back down the hall and out of sight. Somewhere beyond Max’s line of sight, a door squeaked shut. Once the two girls were alone, they looked to one another tentatively, before Mandy was worrying her lip and announcing carefully, “I can’t believe I lost my shit and attacked your family’s Christmas tree. How majorly embarrassing. Sorry.”

Max startled at the plainly said words, her brows knitting together, “What?”

Mueller kicked her heel back and stabbed the toe of her shoe into the ground, continuing, “I-I’m, uh, scared of the dark, y’know? Like, that’s my big secret, I guess. You won’t tell, will you?”

Max was speechless. She didn’t even know what to say. Mandy Mueller fought a huge, king-sized, alien monster, and thought she actually battled the ugly Hargrove family Christmas tree in the dark instead. There was just no way that could be possible, Max thought to herself. No way! That monster had been on top of Mueller and about to eat her! Max couldn’t imagine Mandy Mueller thinking she imagined all of that just because she was afraid of the dark. But, Max amended, why would she admit to being scared at all if she wasn’t telling the truth? And even more to the point, why would she have cause to lie? Max would have to think on that further, but until then, she looked back to Mueller. Strangely sheepish Mandy Mueller. God, this was so weird. Max really thought she might have fallen into a parallel universe.

The sounds of Billy shuffling around somewhere in the back of the house made Max break out of her internal puzzling, and she blinked, rushing out her next words as Billy grew louder, “I won’t tell.”

Mandy’s mouth pinched slightly as she attempted a smile, nodding as she whispered back, “Thanks, Max.”

Billy thudded back into the room none the wiser, adjusting his leather jacket with a heavy rustle, before he was letting out a sigh and jangling his keys pointedly as he looked to Max, “I’m driving Mandy home, Max. Do not go anywhere.”

But what if that monster popped back up? Max glanced around unsurely, weighing her options. Hungry monster that might not even be real, or very real, very terrible stepbrother? Which nemesis would she be willing to deal with? It didn’t take her long to figure out her answer. Finally, Max sighed, conceding and nodding begrudgingly, “Alright.”

Billy seemed to spot her unwillingness to stay put, and pointed to her from across the small vicinity of their living room as he strode towards the door, “I’m serious, Maxine. Don’t go anywhere.”

He swung open the front door, turning to leave, before seeming to remember he had left Mueller behind. He spun back towards her, tossing his arms out expectantly in Mandy’s direction, before the girl in question was trailing after him, rolling her eyes as she closed the distance between them. Just as she was about to cross the threshold, she turned back to Max, commanding lightly, “Make sure to lock the door once we’re gone, Max.”

Before Max could reply, Mueller was out into the cold night air, and Billy was snapping the door shut behind them as he followed.

* * *

“I feel fine.”

Mandy looked to Billy from the passenger seat, “I’m just saying—“

“That you think I’m concussed,” Billy finished above the roar of the wind, waving a cigarette around before flicking out some ash from the driver side window, “Yeah, I heard you, but I’m telling you, it was just a nose bleed.”

Billy caught the sound of Mueller’s heavy sigh before she exclaimed in a whine, “You passed out, Hargrove!”

Billy took a moment to mull over her words, looking for a good reply, only to come up empty handed and shrug flippantly in his passenger’s direction. Mandy made a choking sound of disbelief, and he couldn’t help but snicker.

“Well? Aren’t you gonna at least defend yourself?!” She shouted, waving her arms around wildly as she pivoted her butt in her seat to face him better, “How many times have you been bonked in the head in the passed week, huh? Answer that!”

Billy took a long drag of his cigarette, thinking, before breathing out, “Probably, like, ten. Give or take.”

“Hargrove, you need to multiply that number by, like, five,” Queenie intoned dryly.

“Y’know,” Billy couldn’t help but smirk, jabbing his ciggy in Mueller’s direction, “It’s kinda cute how concerned you are for me. Do you have a crush on me, or something?”

Mandy gave a dramatic, beleaguered groan as she tossed her head back, and Billy couldn’t help but look at her and wheeze out a laugh, “I can’t stand you! I’m worried about my safety right now, you obnoxious butthead! You’re mentally impaired, and driving me home! We could both die at any— _Eek!_ ”

Billy jerked the steering wheel, making Mueller fly across the cab and sprawl across his lap, before she was using his knee to push herself back up and smack him in the shoulder. 

“Oh, fuck you!” She bit out huffily, before she was hunkering down into her seat, putting on her seat belt, crossing her arms petulantly, and facing towards the passenger window. 

Billy could only laugh at her, “I knew you couldn’t get enough of me.”

At the responding frustrated grumble she gave, Billy could only stick his cigarette back into his mouth to keep from making a smart remark in reply.

* * *

Coming upon the luminous house hidden by the trees, Mandy’s gut clenched. She was sure she was going to have another fight with her father over her now long-gone bike once she got into the house, and it almost made her a little disheartened to have to leave Hargrove's ugly, American-made death-trap. That was an abysmal thought, and an even worse feeling, so she shoved it down deep inside of her, and when it tried to come back up, she swallowed it back down with a dry gulp.

Billy put the car in park with a jerk once they were close enough to her house, stopping to look at her expectantly as he leaned back into his seat. She turned away from the sight of her front door, facing him with a blank expression.

This weirdly felt like being dropped off from a date, and Mandy didn’t know how to feel about that, so she instead of addressing the situation, she asked out of the blue, “What was it like?”

Billy’s brows rose, a smile twitching at the corners of his lips as her words reminded him of a shitty pick-up line, “What are you talking about?”

Mandy’s brow folded, and Hargrove’s face subtly mirrored her, “When you passed out, what’d it feel like? Like, did you have vertigo or anything?”

“Hm,” He gave a hum, eyes darting over her shoulder briefly to gaze at her house, before he turned his attention back to her, “Didn’t really feel like anything, I guess. I don’t know, I’ve never conked out like that before.”

Mandy blinked owlishly, “Like nothing?”

“Yeah,” He replied simply, shrugging a little as he continued, gaze falling right through her face as he recalled the sensation, “It was like—“

Mandy met him head on, catching the memory. A whisper of the world left, and the pinhole with her face that his consciousness fell from, and then, a sudden plunge into darkness. The lights went out. The curtain dropped. The show was over, and he hadn’t even gotten an applause for all the shit he went through. For a moment, he thought he might have been dead, and had kind of been a little bitter about it. When he woke, it was to a blurry, warmly-lit bedroom, and it was probably the first time he remembered being that warm and comfortable since California. For a brief moment, he felt like the move to Hawkins, Indiana might have just been one long nightmare, before his vision cleared enough for him to make out his surroundings.

Mandy waited with bated breath as she fluttered her lashes, pushing his mind away from her like a plate that had been too full for her to stomach.

“Falling asleep,” He shrugged, eyes coming back into focus, “But, like, suddenly. Didn’t hurt or anything, though. Why are you so curious? Haven’t you fainted before?”

“Me? Nah,” Mandy shook her head, announcing mockingly, “I told you, didn’t I? Fit as an ox, Billy-boy.”

Tongue in cheek, Billy replied with a scathing amount of sardonic sincerity, “Better watch yourself, someone might wanna change that.”

Mandy gave a scandalized gasp, “I cannot believe you just threatened bodily harm just because you’re jealous of me! ”

At her theatrical amount of offense, Billy lolled his head back against his seat and chuckled at her, tongue darting at to swipe at his lower lip. Mandy tried not to look too irritated by the gooey expression he wore as he watched her.

“I swear to god, you are so lucky you nearly died today,” Mandy reiterated firmly, pointing at him with a violent jab into the air. Billy made a quick swipe for her hand, and she smacked his hand away before yanking at the door handle, hopping out of the car and leaning into the open door to reaffirm threateningly, “Otherwise, I’d have your ass, Hargrove!”

“You can have my ass anytime you want, Mandy-Pandy,” Billy cooed out mockingly, “All you have to do is ask nicely.”

Mandy couldn’t help the growl that left her, both at his unnecessarily clever reply and unappreciated use of her abhorrent nickname, “Oh, shut up, you creep!”

She slammed the door shut on his cackling laughter, whirling around in a blur of polyester and denim to march petulantly towards her house, only to stop at the sound of car window winding down with a mechanical whir and Billy’s call of, “See you tomorrow, Queenie! Stay frosty!”

She flicked her ponytail over her shoulder prissily as she called back, acting as if she didn’t spare a precious millisecond on listening to his reply, “Hope you freeze your balls off out here, Scumbag!”

Her response tickled him, and Hargrove let out a hoot of amusement in reply, before revving his engine and tearing down the driveway as she got to her door, swung it open with little ceremony, and turned to close it behind her. He sent her the bird from his open window, making sure Mandy spotted it, and Mandy slipped half her body from the doorway to hold her own middle finger high in the air in reply, a hapless chuckle bubbling from her lips all the while.

When she finally closed the door behind her and let the warmth of her house seep into her bones after the long, terrible day she had, all she could do was shake her head with a smile, muttering to herself, “Fucking Hargrove.”

* * *

What the fuck was wrong with her? Mandy would never fucking know.

Surviving the inside of Billy Hargrove’s mind was meant to be chalked up as a lesson learned. No more rummaging around inside people, or exploring people’s rotten egg heads. Mandy was over it! Her head was still filled to the brim with memories and feelings that weren’t hers, and she really didn’t think she could endure any more second-hand psychological trauma.

And yet, here she was. She got dropped off at her house by Hargrove, finally being freed of his stupid head and his intense, gratuitous infatuation with her, and found her way to her bedroom for some rest (finally), and she wound up _here!_ That gnawing, festering question that she tucked into the farthest corner of her mind had loosed itself and dragged her into Will Byers’ fucking head when she least expected it!! This was the worst crime that had ever been done unto her, and it was done by her!!!

Mandy was ready to fall headfirst into a tantrum, fists clenched and face red as she paced through the peaceful, grassy landscape, fighting the need to scream. Fuck the lush scenery, and the plush, emerald hills, and the pretty blue sky! She was outraged, and feeling vicious enough to drop to her knees and begin digging at the soft patches of vibrant green grass beneath her feet. 

When she finally did, grumbling to herself and sinking her fingers into the moist, rich soil, she ripped the top net of plant life up within her fists, exposing a strange sight. The exposed earth fell from her fingers in filmy, black wisps. She paused when she noticed, rubbing her fingers together to gather the strangely wet, viscous material. This wasn’t dirt, or clay, or any other sediment she had ever seen before, and maybe she could have just written it off as being alien to her because she was from a big city, but this reminded her of something else. The slick texture invoked the memory of the night she pulled that inky black mass from Nancy Wheeler’s head, and the sensation of it slipping through her fingers reminded her of the way she tugged those fissures from that monster the night of Steve’s party. How ominous.

She threw aside the chunks of grass, wiping off her stained fingers on her jeans before reaching down to dig up the top layer of green and expose more of the black, slimy matter underneath. It wasn’t anomalous, she realized. This was everywhere. She moved to another spot a few steps away, ripping up the topmost layer of grass, and it was the same there. She stood up from her work, looking around at her surroundings with new eyes. These emerald hills that surrounded her no longer felt so pleasant, and she found herself looking for anything else but turf to stand on. There wasn’t. A sea of soft, lulling hills surrounded her, and Mandy watched the grass catch the breeze, making them look like churning waves on a calm ocean.

And she really did not feel good about it.

Her panic set in against her will, and suddenly, she didn’t think it was the breeze that was making the hills move anymore. The ground beneath her feet shifted, and Mandy’s vision tipped precariously sideways, before she caught herself, stumbling over the shifting, liquid-y earth beneath her. Her feet began to squelch into the ground, and with each step, a black ooze bubbled up from between the grass blades. Oh, she thought, officially ready to wake up. This was so fucking nightmarish! Her feet caught with every step as she staggered, and when she dragged her feet up from the ground, they were coated in a black muck that pulled away in gossamery strings and caught air. This was it, she realized as she began to sink, unable to fight the hold it had on her legs. This was what had been hiding in Will Byers. 

This was the black pit.

She began to scream as she fought to free herself, and the ground sunk into nothing but a mercurial pool of obsidian all around her. It churned like a tempestuous ocean, rising in fluctuating waves that tossed her bodily to and fro. As the inky liquid rose to her hips, she raised her arms, shielding herself from a splash of viscous, piceous goop that threatened to spill over her head, before pulling her limbs away from her face and watching as they grew too heavy for her to hold up any longer, shaking and trembling before falling to her sides, suddenly strangely numb and weak.

Her screams grew shriller as the pitch black flooded higher, her body feeling like it was being sucked downward, and as the sky flickered out like a light with a weak fuse, dim and gray and somber and so very far away, Mandy couldn’t help but wail pitifully, tears blurring her vision. She forgot herself to the nightmare, to her helplessness, and to the cold, numb sensation seeping over her. And as the gurgling sludge all around her threatened to swallow her head, nearly spilling in her mouth as she tilted her face to the miserable sky and gasped for air, her final act of rebellion in the looming inevitability of drowning, a face appeared in the pinhole the sky became above her.

Hope stabbed through her panic, and her eyes widened as she looked up at the distant face, until they called, so incredibly naive and useless, “Help! What am I supposed to do?! I don’t know what to do!”

_Help?!_ Did she look like the person that could help anyone presently?! Mandy’s anger swelled, filling her to the brim with righteous indignation as she shrieked, watery eyed and terrified as foul liquid teased at the corners of her mouth, “Save me!!”

“I-I—!“ The voice stuttered as Mandy gargled and blustered over the liquid flooding her mouth, cold and piercing, and tasting of rot and ash, “I don’t know how to help you! I’m sorry—!”

She let out a cry of disgust, warbling as she begged, “Just help me, _please!_ Or else I’m gonna—!!”

A flood of oily liquid poured into her mouth and up her nose, and she spluttered helplessly, choking before spitting out a thick glob of gunk and sobbing as she faced the idea of her inevitable doom. She was probably going to be lost forever within the confines of Will Byers’ fucking head, and Mandy couldn’t even bear the thought of it. At least if she died on her own terms, her soul had a chance of not being lost forever in this ghastly pit of whispery shadows. As far as she was concerned, she would have preferred being sent to hell on a one-way trip.

When her head finally slipped under, her eyes spilling over with liquid obsidian, she faced an endless, muffled void. And she had never been so terrified. She wished to cry, or ball up and scream at the emptiness that ensnared her, but she couldn’t even manage that, and the howl that fought to escape her caught in her chest until her lungs ached with want. Her want became her frustration, and her frustration reminded her of that child with his blackened eyes and his festering anger, and then, she remembered. 

Billy Hargrove was an awful boy, who was totally, grossly in love with her and her bad attitude, and she had been inside his head just a few hours ago. And wasn’t that impressive? Some would even call it impossible. Mandy Mueller did impossible shit all the time. Even when she thought things were impossible, that something was out of her reach or completely beyond her, she could still manage to surprise herself. 

The icy numb that sunk into her bone deep seeped away, being replaced by an electric burn that raced through her veins. She became a frothing thing, skin sizzling, and blood boiling, and bones humming like a live wire; and the dark didn’t seem so scary anymore.

When her frustration built up to crescendo, she finally exploded, her scream ripping from her lungs and echoing with haunting clarity through Will Byers’ head.

Somewhere in Hawkins, Will Byers woke up with a scream that didn’t sound quite like his own.

* * *

“I can’t believe you’re not dead!”

Max turned her head just as a set of arms hooked around her neck and nearly strangled her to death. She choked briefly, before shoving the person off.

“Jesus, Henderson! Do you have attachment issues, or what?” Max groused aloud as Dustin floundered and straightened himself.

“Don’t get testy, jeez,” Dustin began as the rest of The Party, sans Byers, gathered around her, greeting her with similarly excited calls, minus the PDA, “The last we saw of you, you were disappearing with your stepbrother and Mandy Mueller. Nobody knew what could happen!”

“Yeah,” Lucas agreed with a shrug, playing it cool as he tucked his hands in his pockets, “And they’re both insane, so—“

“You are so lucky to be alive right now,” Dustin said with finality, while Mike spoke up next, hooking his thumbs onto his backpack straps.

“So, how’d it go?” He asked, brows raising as he reworded, “What happened?”

The night previous flooded back to her, alive and vibrant, and Max’s pulse rose, her face flushing slightly as she looked towards her locker a few feet away. She waved them over, making her way towards the metal cubby with them in tow, before putting in her combination shiftily, looking around her for any onlookers or eavesdroppers. There weren’t any, so she swung open the locker door and ducked her head slightly, making all the boys follow suit. 

Once they were huddled low and wide-eyed with attentiveness, Max began, “I saw a big demo-dog last night when Mueller was at my house.”

“What?!” They all chorused, drawing the attention of two particularly lanky girls who looked down their noses at them. Max made to shush them before any more people noticed them huddled together suspiciously.

“Oh, my god! Shut up!” Max hissed quickly as the two girls floated by, one tossing a strange look over her shoulder as they turned the corner of the hallway, “But yeah!”

“Where was it?” Dustin asked very seriously, “In the woods? Like Harrington said? Did you guys drive by it? What’d Mandy Mueller say about—“

“Dustin!” Lucas condemned, waving a hand around to shut him up, “You have to let her answer one question before moving onto another one!”

“He’s right, though,” Mike intervened, looking between the boys and Max, before asking, “Where’d you see it? And when you say ‘big’, how big is ‘big’?”

“I mean,” Max began, wide-eyed and now officially panicked alongside her friends, “It was huge! Like, the size of a bear, or something!”

“Demogorgon!” Dustin declared in a stage-whisper as Lucas and Mike nodded along with him.

“Demogorgon,” They both echoed assuredly.

“Demogorgon?” Max questioned, looking between all their resolute expressions curiously, “I thought we were calling these things demo-dogs.”

“Yeah, the ones that look like dogs are called demo-dogs, get it?” Dustin explained redundantly as Lucas took that moment to roll his eyes at his friend, “Demo like in demogorgon, and dog, because it’s, like, a dog. _Demo-dog. Demo-dogs_ grow into _demogorgons_. Obviously.”

Mike shook his head, before amending for Dustin, “We’ve seen the thing you’re talking about. It’s huge, and El fought it. It was bigger than a full-grown man—“

“And twice as ugly,” Lucas tacked on, nodding along with Wheeler’s explanation.

“It almost ate Will,” Mike explained, glancing behind him as if talking about the subject of Will Byers getting hunted by this thing was some great taboo. Maxine had to silence that thought, because maybe it was a little taboo to Will. Max didn’t feel so great about nearly being eaten, either, to be honest.

“Yeah! And us, too!” Dustin chimed after, making Mike turn to give him a glare from he corner of his eye.

“Same,” Max said quietly, glancing around as she dived headlong into her tale, “It was so freaky, Guys. Like, the lights went out, and then, I found Mueller in—“

“The lights where?” Lucas asked, brow furrowing disconcertedly.

“In my house! Duh!” Max replied snippily, to which Lucas merely rose his brows, holding his hands up defensively.

“In your house?!” Dustin cried out, abashed and horrified, “How’d it get in your house, Max?!”

“More like, how the hell are you alive?!” Lucas asked as Dustin looked to him, nodding anxiously in agreement.

“Jesus, just let me tell the story!” Max finally exploded, and the three boys around her stilled, wide-eyed and now silent, “Okay, well, I don’t know how it got in my house, but all this weird stuff was happening! Like, Mueller passed out in my tub.”

All three boys remained silent, before Dustin’s nose scrunched up with confusion as he asked under his breath, “What? Why? Was she taking a bath, or something?”

“I don’t know!” Max asserted, waving her arms around as she gesticulated, slipping into a rambling explanation, “I found her knocked out in an empty bathtub with the sink over-flowing! And, like, she was kind of… blue, or silver, or something! And she got up, and then there was all this noise, and she just, like, busted out of the bathroom and kicked the demo-monster-thing’s ass! Like, I can’t even make this shit up! And then, the lights went back on, and it’s like none of it even happened! I just don’t get it!”

The boys all squinted at her skeptically, and Max watched them with growing irateness the longer they stared, before Mike spoke up.

“Wait,” He finally said, “So, you’re trying to say that Mandy Mueller fought a demogorgon? Like, by herself? I mean… how?”

Max rose her brows pointedly as she nodded, “I’m not _trying_ to say anything. That’s what I said.”

Mike shot her a disbelieving look. Max knew that look; Wheeler was going to be a bitch about this, and try to prove her wrong, “Yeah, but _how_?”

Max looked to Dustin and Lucas, gaping with indignation when they didn’t come to her defense, before looking back to Mike, “She just lit it on fire, and then kicked it a bunch! I mean, God! Why would I make this shit up?! I almost died last night, Guys! Can somebody please give a shit?!”

“I believe you,” Lucas was quick to input, “I mean, it sounds insane, but I believe you, Max. It’s not any more crazy than the shit we’ve seen already.”

Dustin nodded along flatly, before glancing to Mike from the corner of his eye as he shrugged, “It’s not even the craziest thing I’ve heard, honestly. But how’d she light it on fire?”

Max let out a sigh as the boys looked to her, curiosity alight in their eyes, “She got a lighter and my mom’s Aqua Net.”

Lucas and Dustin gasped excitedly, “No way!”

“Ooh!” Lucas called, “I’ve always wanted to try that!”

“Totally mental!” Dustin agreed, laughing as he and Lucas rubbed elbows and guffawed together. Mike rolled his eyes from outside of their chuckle-fest, before shooting his skeptical, narrow-eyed gaze towards Max.

She awaited the worst, but instead, he asked, voice slightly mumbled as if the question wasn’t even for Max, herself, “How’d she know that fire hurts them?”

Max gave pause, cocking her head slightly in contemplation. That was a good question.

With a final shrug, Max replied unsurely, “Lucky guess?”

* * *

Nancy Wheeler was on a locomotive with no brakes, it seemed, and she had no choice but to look on, helpless and terrified as she rode her way towards inevitable disaster. 

It was beginning to look like the government was up to something, after all. Murray Bauman had bequeathed to her and Jonathan a series of strange devices, but only a few seemed to actually pick up any readings. The unsightly, beige handheld device that she toted around in her bag crackled and clicked throughout the day at uneven variables, its gauge needle jumping around precariously as she moved from class to class, and the big grey box that Jonathan stashed in his trunk throughout most of the day lit up with wild lights whenever they drove around town, holding out a clear cylinder to take readings of the air. These could not be normal readings, Nancy knew, but she wasn’t sure what any of it meant. 

Bauman was right. It was all erratic, haphazard and senseless. Nancy shouldn’t have been picking up any signs of anthropogenic radiation during school—radioactive material wasn’t something common place in high schools, anyway—and yet, she still did. With no rhyme, or reason, and mostly during the spaces between classes. It just… didn’t make sense. Teenagers couldn’t emit the high levels of radiation these machines were picking up on.

So, Nancy jotted down her readings in a her wired notebook, noted their time and frequency, and sat in Jonathan’s car, marking their locations on the map he stashed in his glove compartment. None coincided, and her curiosity bloomed. 

They drove around the woods near the lab, walked along the train tracks, and even sat beyond the treeline one chilly evening, staring at their stupid beige handheld device. It crackled, whining to fill Jonathan and Nancy’s collective silence, but the gauge didn’t jump like it did at school, or around town. It waved at them steadily as they stared at the box’s clear plastic face, transfixed. The radioactivity was there, obviously, but not in dangerous spikes, or fluctuating levels. It was constant, and not in excessive levels like Nancy had first assumed it would be. 

The mystery alluded her still, and it might have been driving her a little mad.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” She said finally, looking through her notes as she and Jonathan sat at table in a secluded corner of the library, “I mean, Hawkins High, Lover’s Lake, Loch Nora, Main Street—what the hell do they all have in common?! Why is there so much fluctuating radiation in these random areas?”

Jonathan picked nervously at his nails, reading the notes quietly from over her shoulder, before inputting, “It seems like it reoccurs in high traffic areas. The high school, a make-out spot, a residential neighborhood, and the main street that cuts through town are the areas it keeps popping up.”

Nancy paused, looking over her shoulder owlishly before leaning away from the table and sitting straight in her chair, pivoting slightly to face her companion. She hummed in thought, “You’re right, but… it’s not rhythmic. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern. Like, yeah, the energy reoccurs there more often compared to the other locations, but only sporadically. I mean, the only place we can even get a steady reading is around the lab, so what is this other energy source?”

Jonathan bounced his leg slightly, before he was blurting out, “I think Will might be having nightmares again.”

Nancy startled at the sudden shift in topic, “What?”

He nodded, the movement almost frantic, before he was continuing, his voice a near whisper, “I mean—Nance, it couldn’t—again, right? So soon?”

The suddenness of her realization nearly knocked the wind out of her. While Nancy had been so preoccupied trying to pin down the lab for the radiation, Jonathan had already been silently contemplating the likeliness of Will Byers, and whatever trans-dimensional monster had previously inhabited him, being the cause of the strange energy readings. He had been worried about everything that happened during the fall happening all over again, a slim few months later. 

Nancy opened her mouth to reply, only for her attention to be drawn to the librarian, who was currently berating a student at the book returns desk. 

“This is over a month late, young lady!!” The surly woman barked from the front of the library, and Nancy’s fickle, beige science box whined to life from within her shoulder bag. She was quick to curse, bending down to switch off the device to avoid the already irate librarian’s wrath.

“Look, I’m sorry,” A tired voice replied, “If I have to pay you money, that’s not a problem.”

Nancy sat back up again after closing her bag, looking to Jonathan, a placation settled heavy on her tongue. Previous to this moment, she was almost positive all of this was caused by the government’s recklessness and Hawkins Lab, but now, she had another theory. 

Maybe Will Byers was the cause of all these spikes in radiation. Was the Mind Flayer inside him, and causing insane amounts of radioactive decay around town? And on that note, could the gateway that was once within Hawkins Lab be causing the constant levels of radiation on the sight? Could the Mind Flayer’s unnatural presence be causing all this radioactivity, instead of Nancy’s previous assumption, Hawkins Lab? Nancy wasn’t sure of the answer, but she knew she couldn’t rule it as being impossible.

Still, she couldn’t stop herself from lying with an unbelievable amount of sangfroid.

“No,” She said, her voice leaving no room for argument. Her mind viciously recalled the way Will’s empty eyes looked through her, piercing cold and hollow like a doll, and the way his veins pulsed, inky and thick under his skin, and the way his little body became fueled by some otherworldly power, his small hand clamping around his own mother’s neck, before Nancy forced the memories and the frigid emotions they invoked to the back of her mind as suddenly as they sprouted up. She looked to Jonathan, skin folding between her brows as she reiterated, “No way. There’s just no way he can be the cause of it. I mean, we got the Mind Flayer out of him, remember? And you said it yourself: it looks like all the spikes are reoccurring in popular hangout spots—I don’t think Will’s been going down to Lover’s Lake, Jonathan. There’s no way it can be him. There has to be another reason.”

Jonathan looked to her, eyes shrewd and lips twisted into an enigmatic expression, and the conversation was stashed for the meantime. 

* * *

The greatest thing about being popular was that one was never truly without friends, and when one was never without friends, one was never without an alibi.

“If anyone asks,” Mandy panted once she sat at a lunch table between Becky Chapman and her similarly semi-popular pal, Laurie, “I’ve been here all lunch with you guys, okay?”

The two girls paused in crunching down on their mini carrots, before looking to one another. Their eyes asked the same question: _Why should we, and what do we get out of it?_ The answer came not a moment later: _She’s the most popular girl in school, it’d be suicide to do anything but agree._ Which was so true, honestly. Becky and Laurie’s claim to fame came from drooling over Steve Harrington’s weiner, and who was the reason Harrington was even relevant? That’s right, _Mandy._ Mandy made Harrington, and these girls should have a taken a knee before her omnipotence. She was the maker and ball-breaker of Kings, after all.

“Obviously,” Laurie, a tall, curly haired girl, replied without pause, chomping down on another carrot, “Where else would you be, Mandy?”

Well, not taking a pair of bolt cutters to Mitchell Radner’s piddly little bike chain, that was for sure. 

Mandy laughed at her coy reply, before she was oohing as she caught sight go the girl’s earrings, “I love your earrings! So cute! Where’d you buy?”

They weren’t particularly amazing, really, given they seemed a little too heavy and tugged slightly at the girl’s earlobes, and Mandy even knew where they were from, but she still nodded and gasped excitedly when Laurie gave her answer.

“Oh, my God! All the way from the city!” Mandy moaned as she tossed her head back, only being slightly dramatic as she continued, “Ugh, I wanna go now!”

The girls laughed, and Laurie was particularly pleased by her approval, and Mandy knew she had her alibi. What she hadn’t been expecting was what came next.

“We’re going this weekend, actually. You should come with,” Laurie announced, and Becky nodded along, picking at her cafeteria food as she tacked on, “Yeah, Tina, too. She’s looking for something to wear for her _date._ ”

Both girls made a point to roll their eyes, and Mandy looked between them with a pair of high-arched brows. She took a piece of pepperoni off Becky’s depressing, cardboard pizza as she inquired, “What date?”

“Oh,” Both girls blinked unison, shooting one another mirrored looks of surprise that did nothing to ease Mandy’s curiosity, “You haven’t heard?”

Mandy shook her head, giving them a shrug, “No. What’s up?”

“Tina has been after Billy ever since he dumped Cummy Cane,” Becky said with a snarky sneer, and Mandy tried not to let out the bewildered laugh that wanted to escape her as she heard Becky use the dumb moniker she came up with after two beers. Mandy actually felt a little bad now, hearing someone else say it. No wonder Kim hated her guts—that name was such a cursedly contagious epithet. The girl would never escape it for the rest of her days.

Laurie bit down on another carrot, saying around a mouthful of food, “Yeah, and he finally asked Tina out last Sunday.”

Ugh. Wonder-boy Billy Hargrove and his unstoppable dick was at it again. Mandy couldn’t decide if she wanted to roll her eyes or toss her cookies. He truly nauseated her sometimes. She swore he must have had one more hour in the day with the way he made plans and got around. Literally, she was with him on Sunday! And she nearly burnt down his fucking house! When did he even have time to ask Tina out when he had obviously been busy drooling over her for the better part of the day?! Billy Hargrove was the pied-piper of pussy, and Mandy couldn’t help but be in awe of his astounding scumminess. His game was off the fucking charts.

She refused to reveal her disproval, especially given Tina was close friends with Carol, and since Carol was currently pissed with Mandy, this would have been a pretty opportune time to make sure Carol couldn’t ice Mandy out of her friend-group. The bitch was capable, honestly, and incredibly driven towards the goal of bringing about Mandy’s social-demise, so Mandy figured she could just be cool with Tina and shove her undeniable likability in Carol’s face. Ha. Neiner, neiner, Bitch; Mandy was about to win these girls over with her sparkling personality, and Carol was going to be stuck with a front row seat.

Mandy gasped, laughing slightly as she settled her expression into one of astonishment and wicked delight, “Oh, my God! No way! I could swear he just broke up with Kim, though!”

The girls nodded, and Becky looked slightly off-put. Mandy peeked into her mind to spy a well of bitterness within her. Becky couldn’t believe one of her girlfriends could date someone who stood her up, and Mandy couldn’t help but grimace for her wounded trust. Oh, that was right. Becky had been into Hargrove, hadn’t she? Oi vey. 

For Becky’s peace of mind, Mandy lowered her voice to ask conspiratorially, “Do you guys think he was double-timing Kim with Tina?”

Both girls gasped at her question, Becky’s face morphing with impish bemusement, and Laurie near salivating at the first whiff of gossip. Mandy had to fight down her bubbling triumph at finding some girls who were willing to shit-talk Billy Hargrove with her. Ugh, her heart sang, honestly. She suffered daily knowing that Hargrove and his slime ball buddies were talking about her negatively in some respect. If it wasn’t how bitchy she was, it was how hot she was, and Mandy was so glad to finally find some girls who had escaped Billy Hargrove’s hypnotic, mind-control powers.

Becky bit her lip, whispering, “Oh, my God! I didn’t even think—!”

“I know!” Laurie replied, voice ringing clear with anxious amusement, “But it _so_ makes sense!”

Mandy looked between them, smiling and bright-eyed as she settled into the comfortable roll of teenage gossip-troll, “So, is it true?”

Becky rose her brows haughtily as she replied, “Well, I don’t know, but knowing what a player Billy is, I’d totally believe it.”

Laurie nodded, shrugging in a hapless gesture, before giggling slightly, “Oh, my God! And Tina has been eyeing him for so long! I don’t think she’d even care if he was seeing someone else!”

Mandy sputtered around a sound of amusement, caught somewhere between humored and horrified by Laurie’s statement. She truly couldn’t understand wanting someone bad enough that she’d be willing to share them with other girls. Mandy couldn’t decide if that was desperate or just plain depressing.

Laurie and Becky looked to her with varying looks of hesitance and nervousness, and Mandy could see in their minds that the expression she was wearing was a little dire. She couldn’t even help herself, honestly, and the more she tried to correct it, the more disgusted she looked. She ended up just giving it up and letting her disapproving expression settle heavy on her features.

With a twitch of ironic amusement, Mandy’s big mouth couldn’t resist quipping, “I really hope she’s not gonna waste her money on more than one outfit.”

Laurie and Becky broke out into snickers, obviously picking up on her insinuation that Tina would be getting dumped sooner rather than later, before whacking playfully at her shoulders as Mandy flinched theatrically against their onslaught.

“Oh, my God, Mandy! That’s so bad!”

“So right on, but I can’t even believe you just said that aloud!”

The three of them broke down into a huddle of girlish giggles, until the school intercom blared to life, a voice nearly deafening everyone in the cafeteria as it crackled from the speakers monotonously, _“Mandy Mueller to the main office. Mandy Mueller. Main office.”_

Both girls on either side of her suddenly ooh’d, continuing to giggle, only at her rather than with her now. The rest of the cafeteria followed suit as Mandy stood from her seat obediently.

_“Oooh, Mueller’s in trouble!”_

_“Uh-oh, Mandy!”_

_“OooOOooOoooOooh, Muuuuelleeerrr!”_

“Hey, Mandy, what’d you do?!” A disembodied voice cried above the symphony of judgement, and Mandy didn’t even have answer. There were just too many options for her to choose from, and the answer to that question was simply impossible to decipher.

* * *

Jim Hopper’s most recent regret sat at the bottom of a ruined, cardboard box. He should have known better than to go sniffing after tracks that he knew would lead nowhere nice, but it was just his nature at this point to follow clues. A few too many years of navigating jungles and chasing cases in the big city had turned him into a blood hound. If he caught a whiff of trouble, he just followed his big dumb nose head-first into his newest psychological trauma.

This was a bit different, though, he would admit. Sifting through murder scenes, sidestepping cold puddles of blood and gore, and ducking as bullets whizzed past his ears in the middle of a war zone were both very different to this case. Kids were different than mere random strangers, and his own fear would never seem quite as potent as a little girl’s. There was also the fact that he’d never actually witnessed something so cold-hearted and grisly. Sure, he’d seen the afters, but he had never watched something so horrific in real time. He’d never heard a little girl scream like that before, either. That might have been the worst part, in truth. 

That was probably what was making him give pause. The violent humanity of what he witnessed made him wring his hands on his steering wheel as he tried to work himself up to get out of his car. He wasn’t sure if facing Blondie right now was the best thing to do, truthfully. He was a little bit worried he’d see that terrified little girl’s face looking back at him once he laid eyes on that mean-spirited teenager, but he knew it was a necessary evil. 

That miserable fucking tape also showed him something else, and it might have opened a can of worms Hopper had never expected to come across.

Jim Hopper looked to the manilla folder in the passenger’s seat, before finally finding his resolve. He snatched up the folder, old over-exposed pictures neatly tucked inside, before making his way into Hawkins High, only to be stopped immediately once he opened the door to the building.

“Hopper,” A female voice droned, and Jim smiled through his discomfort at seeing such a regrettably familiar face. 

“Hey, Dolores,” He greeted, only for the woman to saddle him with a distinctly cold look, making him move to adjust his hat as his awkwardness felt all at once suffocating. He made it a point to wave around his folder, reminding his previous one-night-stand that he was here on official business, “I need to talk to one of the students about a case.”

The woman shot him a disapproving look as she pursed her lips and picked up the phone nearest to her, holding her finger before her in a stalling gesture, “Just a moment.”

Hopper gave a heavy sigh, before turning to plop down in one of the old seats he used to sit in back in his own high school days. 

The time he spent waiting went faster than he would have liked, and after a short, clipped conversation over the phone, Dolores was taking Blondie’s name and droning it over the school intercom. At first, Hopper suspected she might have been one of those kids that didn’t bother showing up when a school office called upon them, but after a sparse few minutes, Blondie was swinging open the old oak door and appearing like the living-dead, hazy eyed and frowning. It wasn’t until she spotted him in his seat that she straightened, looking around suspiciously, before doing a 180-degree turn to disappear the way she came.

“ _Uh_ —no, you don’t!” He barked as he bolted up, catching the door and pulling her back into the office by the popped collar of her too-cool teenage jacket. She followed like a helpless fish being reeled in on a hook, looking to him with a beseeching expression as she blurted out.

“Aw, c’mon, Chief! I didn’t do it! This is defamation of character—they’re trying to stain my reputation!” She whined out as she allowed herself to be dragged back into the office, tossing her hands in the air helplessly with a jangle of her clinquant jewelry, “You can’t believe ‘em!”

Of course, Hopper thought dully to himself, Blondie committed another gray-area crime. Because of course she did. From the moment Hopper spotted her fleeing that party, he had known she was an untapped well of problems. He just wished she hadn’t proved him so right since then. Hopper settled an exasperated expression onto her once she had quieted, looking up at him with a set of pinched brows and a lip caught nervously between her teeth. Yep, that was the face of trouble, all right. He gave a sigh. Hadn’t he told her to keep out of trouble? He swore he had.

“Whatever you’re talking about, stop right there,” He groused out miserably, before he was looking to Dolores behind the counter, and grumbling out gruffly, “Case is confidential. I’m gonna have to talk to her alone. She’s coming with me, but I’ll bring her back within the hour.”

His ex-fling seemed to pick up on the edginess in his tone, because the previously stony woman merely nodded from her position in front of her computer screen, watching as he dragged Blondie by her collar out of the front doors of the school.

As they trekked through the parking lot, weaving through parked cars and the occasional loitering teenager, Blondie started again, “Oh, this is so unfair! I didn’t even do anything—!“

By the time he dragged her back to his truck, she was gesticulating, obviously impassioned, and Hopper rolled his eyes once he let her go, making a point to give her a little shake to get her attention as he asked below her obnoxious teenage theatrics, “What the hell are you talking about? What’d you do now, huh?”

“Oh,” Blondie paused, brows raising curiously, “So, this isn’t about Radner?”

Hopper mirrored her expression, settling a hand on his belt as he ducked his head to meet her eye level, “Radner? Isn’t that the name of the girl who hit you with her car? What’s going on with that now?”

Blondie’s expression got even more impossibly suspicious as she looked around, narrow-eyed, before crossing her arms and shifting her weight into a single leg to cock a hip, “Nothing.”

Hopper rose his brows pointedly as he echoed incredulously, “ _Nothing?_ ”

Blondie squinted at him, brows furrowing as she looked him up and down.

“If this isn’t about the Radners, then what am I getting the shake down for?” She asked, eyes looking through him like she was merely thinking aloud, before an epiphany seemed to strike her and she took a sharp inhale, “Did El snitch on me?! I can’t believe her! Nothing bad even happened! Everyone was alive afterwards!”

He jolted at the mention of Eleven’s name, before promptly shushing the girl before him. She had to grace to actually looked a little chastened, before Hopper opened his mouth to ask, voice lowered to a safe volume: “What are you talking about? What have you done now? More teleporting? Fires?”

“What? No!” She didn’t even breathe before she blurted out the words, before she was pausing, her face scrunching up, eyes drifting up towards the gloomy sky and lips curling around her following words as she muttered confusedly, “Wait… So if this isn’t about yesterday… And it’s not about… And you couldn’t even know about that other thing… Then… Wait, why are you even here again?”

God, this brat was going to kill him. Hopper was sure his blood pressure was through the roof! Blondie took to advice like oil to water, apparently. And Hopper probably wouldn’t have minded it, if it weren’t for the fact she was supernaturally gifted and currently impressing upon Eleven’s young, malleable mind, which was _also_ supernaturally gifted. It was a recipe for absolute disaster, and Hopper knew Blondie and El, with their powers combined, could no doubt bring upon the end of the world if they went unsupervised for much longer. They were just too fucking capable of destruction. Blondie with her freaky magic tricks, and El with her floaty mind powers, and poor, sad, fucked-up Jim Hopper stuck in between them, carrying a lot more emotional baggage than any man should ever be expected to carry while trying to somehow manage the most unmanageable animal on planet earth: The Teenage Girl. Two of them, to be exact.

It was just too much for Jim, and that could have been why he closed his eyes and let out a pained gust of air from his nose as he practically pleaded for his own peace of mind, “Just tell me you didn’t do anything that could get you brought in by Big Brother.”

“No,” Blondie replied evenly, and Hopper opened his eyes to spot her shaking her head plainly, brows raised with genuine innocence as she continued, “I mean… Well, not like… _That_. I told you I wouldn’t, Chief. I’ve been trying to be better, I promised.”

He watched her, taking in her open expression and level tone, and he believed her. Mostly. There was just this glint in her eye that told him there was so much more to the story. So, _so_ much more. Hopper couldn’t help but recall Eleven’s words: _“…She can change the inside of people’s heads.”_ So, maybe she was being honest; maybe it wasn’t like that. All these telepathic powers weren’t always so overt. Maybe Blondie hadn’t been zapping herself around, or doing anything too attention-grabbing, but that didn’t mean she hadn't been digging around in places that she shouldn't have. 

“ _Blondie_ ,” He droned out warningly, and the teenager merely rose her brows higher in reply, maintaining her silence, “I swear, if I find out you’ve been up to any of your dangerous, weird shit again, we’re gonna have a serious problem—“

A smile broke across her face at his words, and Hopper couldn’t help but inwardly lament over the fact he was clearly losing his touch. His old age must have been wearing down on the tough-guy routine. Blondie looked up at him with a pointedly amused look as he thought that, and he remembered suddenly that she could read minds. Jesus Christ. Right. Of course. Great. 

The girl’s mouth quirked into a lopsided smirk as she replied a little too innocuously, holding her hands before her, folded, “I told you, Chief, I’m being good. We’re on the same team; I don’t want any more trouble, either.”

Hopper gave a heavy exhale at the Shirley Temple routine, “I’m being serious—“

“I know—“ The girl replied immediately.

She really didn’t, Hopper couldn’t help but think, and in the moment that followed the thought, her expression morphed into furrowed concern. So, she really was hearing his thoughts. Jim knew that, but still couldn’t help being a little impressed by the evidence of the fact.

“What are you talking about?” She asked seriously, making to cross her arms as she looked up at him, a soberness putting a damper on her previous girlish mischievousness, “Why are you really here then?”

With a sigh, he gestured to the folder in his hands, before opening the passenger door to his car and settling the beige packet down on the seat, before stepping away from it and making a vague gesture to it, “I want you to open that folder and tell me if you recognize that dead woman.”

Her expression morphed into pale-faced horror, “ _What?_ A dead woman?”

Jim nodded, looking to her apologetically as he gave a shrug, “Sorry, Kid. Couldn’t get one of her living. I only got this one from the county morgue, ‘cause I know a guy.”

When she hesitated to step towards the papers, he continued, “It’s important. I swear it is. I just need you to tell me if you know her.”

Blondie stared at him hard, before shaking her head, “I don’t think I should, Chief.”

“Blondie—“ Hopper tried to push, but at his call, she took a step back from him and the open door, and his words fell short of passing his lips as he looked to her. Shoulder’s squared, jaw clenched tight, and eyes spearing into him. He knew what that look meant. She just read him, and she didn’t like the reason he was really here.

She proved him right when she spoke her next words, damning and cold as they were, “You looked into me.”

That sounded a lot like an accusation, Jim noticed, and he couldn’t help but feel shamed by the hurt that crossed Blondie’s face. Of all the time’s they had encountered one another, it seemed to be around sixty-six percent of the time he was making this kid cry, and Hopper didn’t feel great about it. Even the first night met her, she was sobbing. He didn’t want this to end up like the other times, and he tried to explain as gently as he could.

“It’s nothing personal, Blondie,” He insisted in the softest voice he could manage, he gave a sigh when he saw her anger clear as day in the watery sheen on her eyes, “It’s not that I didn’t believe you, Kid, I swear it. It was just due diligence. I had to check, had to make sure El was safe. You just can’t trust your gut with stuff like this. I know you know how it is.”

Her lips wobbled, before they were settling in a straight line as she steeled herself, “What’d you find out then, Chief?”

Nothing good, he wanted to say. Only found out that shit’s been a mess for a little too long now, and she’d probably never be free of it. No matter how far she pulled herself from her time in that place, she’d never be truly clean of it. It would always linger. She looked at him like she knew that, and Hopper couldn’t help but nod to her in shared understanding.

“Most of it,” He said finally, commenting guardedly, “Had a rough few years a little while back, huh?”

She nodded stoically, looking away briefly, her eyes shining brighter now with unshed tears.

Hopper would have preferred to not see them fall, so he continued, his tone suddenly curious, “You think you’d tell me the one thing I couldn’t read up on?”

When she looked back at him, her eyes were shining for a different reason. Slowly, she said, “Depends.”

“Did it happen in there?” The words hung between them for a beat, and Hopper’s impatience resented the wait. Blondie blinked as she stared at him blankly, and even without her mind-reading, he was sure she knew what he was really asking: _Did she have her abilities before Pennhurst?_

He wasn’t even sure if she’d answer at all, and it was that fact that made him refuse to hold his breath as he awaited any reaction from her. To his surprise, her brows rose, and she quietly shook her head, to which he couldn’t help but ask, “Before?”

She looked so much like that little girl in the tape as she replied hesitantly, her voice smaller than her usual ostentatious bluster, “Always.”

“Always?” He parroted, and when she nodded in affirmation, he asked, “So, what was it that got you sent away?”

He was skating on thin ice, he knew it. That was probably water-works city, population him and Blondie, but he couldn’t help himself. He was hungry for answers, and he knew he’d stew in his miserable curiosity and what-ifs forever if she never told him.

She merely gave him a little, pinched smile, her next words ringing clear and heavy with meaning, “People just don’t like to face what is, Chief.”

“I hear that, Blondie,” Hopper replied, nodding along with her and shooting her a mirroring, morose smile, “Sorry, Kid. I know it was tough.”

She merely snorted, her veneer of teenage pettiness becoming her emotional crutch for the moment as she crossed her arms and cocked her hip, “No, Chief, you don’t really know. But, y’know, I think that’s for the best.”

She stepped forward once the words were out, immediately reaching for the papers he set before her. Hopper got out of the way, and let her. It only seemed fair after the interaction they just had. He understood he was being invasive with the research and all the questions, and he knew it must have felt somewhere around dehumanizing to have one’s secrets laid bare, so he figured he'd give her an easy out, and let them move on without a fight. He was satiated. For now. 

Her shoulders loosened as she gave a heavy exhale, picking up the folder and flicking open the front cover with an unreasonable amount of panache after the emotionally soddened moment they just had previous. Hopper peeked from over her shoulder at the filmy papers she exposed in the daylight. The image that greeted her was that of an ashen woman with hair so blonde under the unsightly lights of the morgue it looked silvery. Blondie’s expression slackened, before she was grabbing the picture and sliding it away to see other snapshots. The following photos showed different angles and distances of the same dead woman, face pallid, and skin waxy, and chest stitched together with a T. The more she flipped through, the more clear it became that she had known this woman, her face growing more bewildered.

When she looked back at him, she wasn’t so much grief-stricken at the sight of a corpse, but rather, puzzled.

Blondie wasted no time, “How’d she die?” 

Leave it to this kid to get ahead of herself, Hopper couldn’t help but think to himself. What was new? Hopper shot her a pointed look as he accused lightly, “So, you do know her.”

Blondie shot him a look right back, brows raising snootily, “I asked first.”

Hopper couldn’t help but retort, tone mimicking hers, “I’m the Chief of Police.”

Blondie pursed her lips at that, answering with a clipped, “Rude. I know her. Now you.”

“Eleven,” Hopper replied succinctly, and Blondie’s eyes widened as she gasped loudly.

“Shut up!!” The command came out so vehement that Hopper promptly shut up, utterly flabbergasted as the girl continued, her voice back to a conspiratorial whisper, “Oh, my God! How’d she do it?!”

Hopper shook himself from his wordless stupor, announcing dryly, “I think you know how she did it.”

Mandy took that moment to pause, eyes alight with something not unlike alarm, “With her—her _powers?_ I-I didn’t… I didn’t even know that was… _Possible_.”

Her gaze clouded slightly as she looked off in thought, obviously thinking over this new information, and Hopper had to take some solace in knowing that, though Blondie had one foot in a handful of different problems at any given time, and constantly seemed to be doing things she definitely shouldn’t have been doing, she hadn’t been roaming around and committing murder. So, Hopper supposed, that was a relief. 

“But wait,” She said suddenly, brows knitting together as she waved around a flimsy photo of the pallid cadaver, “How’d El know Dr. Frazier?”

Blondie genuinely seemed to not fully grasp the implications of the entire situation, and Hopper was struck by her undeniable naivety. Ungodly powers, or not, Blondie was still a dumbass kid at heart. Hopper found it almost endearing. 

Hopper pointed to the paper in her hands, explaining slowly in a hushed voice, “The woman you know as Dr. Frazier—the woman who worked at the mental institute you were kept in—was a woman by the name of Connie Frazier, who was a government agent that worked closely with a man by the name of Dr. Martin Brenner, the man who ran Hawkins Lab during the years Eleven was kept there.“

Blondie’s face turned stony at his explanation. 

“The white haired man,” She supplied.

“Yeah,” Hopper replied, surprise evident in voice, “You know him, too?”

She shook her head, “Only from inside El’s mind.”

Hopper nodded in understanding.

“You understand now, right? Why I had to ask you about your… Gift…?” Hopper inquired, unsure of his wording, but Blondie nodded along, understanding dawning on her expression. It seemed to finally pieced it together. Questions of how her powers came to be, and the situation of El killing Frazier, a woman who worked closely with her in Pennhurst, who was very curious about her claims to read peoples minds—

“You think these government people were working the asylums?” She asked, her face a mask of incredulity, “I mean, this lady couldn’t have just shown up for me, Chief. They had to be scoping these places out, right? Looking for people to experiment on, or whatever.”

Hopper shrugged, rubbing his hands down his face with an audible scrape to his scruff. In the back of his mind, he made a note to shave soon, before he was replying contemplatively, “Yeah, it seems like it. It would definitely make sense. Endless supply of test subjects, and most without family to care for them, it would be easy pickings. Nobody would miss ‘em…”

Blondie nodded, eyes narrowed as she cued cynically, “But?”

“But what if we’re wrong? What if it’s only you?” Hopper asked, and Blondie’s expression contorted into something vaguely pained, “What if they sent that woman out there just for you, Kid? What if they have some file on you somewhere? You feel comfortable risking that?”

Blondie frowned, shooting him a tired look as she groaned miserably, “Oh, my _God._ Is this seriously you lecturing me about being careful right now? All of this, just to give me another warning?!”

“Kid, I’m not—“

“Oh, you so _are!_ ” She finally exclaimed, rolling her eyes as she tossed her hands into the air exasperatedly, “And I already told you, I haven’t been doing anything like that!”

He ripped off his hat, tossing it into the truck and scrubbing a hand through his hair agitatedly, before settling his weight onto one leg and setting his arms akimbo, leaning forward and hunching his shoulders to hiss down at the blonde, “Listen, I came here, because I didn’t know for sure, got it? Not for a lecture. Not for a warning. Just for answers. Because this, if it’s not just you, is huge. It’s _disgusting—_ “

“Egregious,” Blondie tacked on under her breath, and Hopper gave a sigh as he heard her, leaning his weight back upright.

“Egregious,” He parroted wearily, before continuing, “It’s an abuse of power, using medical patients—who were probably wards of the state—for government experiments. And who knows how far they went? How many people they hurt, or even _killed—?_ ”

“But they’re dead,” Blondie inputted, her voice ringing with a blatant need for confirmation, “Right? The people who did this.”

Hopper nodded, adding soberingly, “But there’s always someone to pick up where they left off.”

“Bad men,” She replied knowingly, “I’ve heard it all before, Chief.”

He gave a tired sigh, shifting his weight on his feet as he gazed warily around the two of them. He spotted a few pairs of eyes distantly, some teenage boys looking over in their direction from across the parking lot, who obviously saw his aggressive body language towards Blondie, if their suspiciously narrowed eyes were anything to go by. He got carried away, he knew, but there was something so thick about this girl’s head, it felt like he could yell at her for hours and she’d still hear nothing he said. He was desperate for her to understand this—he _needed_ her to understand how big this was. 

Where Hopper had previously assumed people like Eleven were created from government experiments, he had been proven wrong by Blondie. He had thought they were totally different entities—anomalies that were products of different circumstances—but this definitely threw a wrench into that hypothesis. Because where he had thought they were completely different, it seemed the government believed otherwise. Connie Frazier’s appearance in Mandy Mueller’s life wasn’t an accident, Hopper knew. He just couldn’t figure out how much these people really knew, or how Frazier even found her. What about Blondie had stuck out? 

Right then and there, Jim Hopper decided to pull some more Pennhurst records. If there was anyone watching his trail, it would throw them off Blondie’s scent, and if Frazier popped up in any more records, he would know Blondie wasn’t an outlier. She hadn’t been truly ousted. 

“Alright, Kid,” Hopper stated finally after a long pause, “I just need you to tell me one more thing, and then I’ll let you go.”

Blondie cocked her head, returning to her bratty persona as she said slyly, “Shoot, maybe I’ll tell you.”

Hopper refrained from rolling his eyes as he replied stonily, jerking his chin towards the crown of her head, “You ever tell that woman the truth? About what was going on up there for real?”

Blondie laughed outright in reply, shaking her head, “You think I would? I told the truth _once,_ and they locked me up. How stupid do you think I am? Honestly!”

Jim shrugged off her offended tone, “Well, had to make sure, anyway.”

She rolled her eyes, not even disguising her irritation, “For how much you claim to know all about me, you really have no clue who you’re talking to, Chief.”

“Alright, alright, already,” Hopper waved her off, making a point to pluck the rumpled, grainy photo from between her fingers and set it back into the manila folder with finality, before picking up the folder, and closing his door and locking it, “Time to get back to the books, Brat. I’m sick of you.”

The brat in question let out a snicker, nose scrunching up as she looked to him, turning back towards the office building, “It was a great talk, Chief. I think we burned through my whole economics quiz! You’re an actual life-saver, if you can even believe that.”

Hopper couldn’t help the surprised laugh that bubbled out of him at her words. He was a police officer, he wanted to say, serve and protect was the whole gig. 

“No shit?” He replied, tone wry, but only half sarcastic as he followed her, walking her back towards the school, “I actually haven’t heard that one in a while, Kid.”

She laughed at his dry tone, the sound a little mean-spirited as it rang around in his ears, “Ha! Probably ‘cause you’re a dickhead.”

“Watch it,” He warned, tone not betraying his good-humor, “I still got a handful of reasons to cuff you, Blondie.”

She merely stuck her nose in the air as she closed in on their destination, “Yeah, but you can’t prove any of ‘em.”

And with that as her bid goodbye, she trotted back up to the office door, swinging it open and sweeping inside with a flick of her blonde hair. Jim Hopper could only shake his head, rolling his eyes as he adjusted his hat and turned away from the school building.

He hadn’t ever been happier that his school days were behind him.

* * *

“Okay, we’re taking a vote,” Mike declared as The Party convened in the A/V room. Everyone was in attendance, including Max, who stood between Dustin and Lucas as she looked on a little mystified. The ceremony these dweebs applied to what was basically gossiping in the A/V room was so dumb, honestly, and it never failed to dumbfound her, “Max encountered a demogorgon last night in her house. Some of us think it could mean the demo-dog Dustin lost has molted after it ate that dog on Saturday night—“

“Oh, c’mon, guys!” Dustin moaned, tossing his head back, “You can’t keep shaming me like this!”

Lucas looked to his friend from over Max’s shoulder, lips pursed, “It’s what you get, Dustin, making all this shit happen again.”

“I didn’t make all of this happen again!” Dustin insisted, “No one could have ever foresaw—!!”

“I could have,” Max intercepted before the boy could work himself up to a full on ramble, “I literally told you it was a bad idea to keep it.”

“I did, too,” Lucas added, “You freakin’ made all this happen, Dude! So stupid.”

“Okay, okay!” Mike barked, slamming a hand on the table top to gather everyone’s attention again, and Will jolted at the loud sound, before everyone finally quieted again, “It doesn’t matter whose fault this is, okay? The fact is it’s all our obligation to catch this thing. No one else will stop it otherwise.”

Will looked to Mike, shooting him a hopeful look from the corner of his eye, “We could always tell Jonathan. He might help us.”

Mike let out a groan, “Yeah, but then he’ll tell my sister, and she’ll never let us live it down.”

“She’s got that stick up her butt, it’s true,” Dustin agreed, seeming a little disheartened, “Do all girls start to suck after a while, or is that just the affect Steve had on your sister?”

Mike whipped his head around to shoot Dustin an offended look, crying out as he gave him a pointed smack, “Dude!!”

“What? I was agreeing with you!” Dustin insisted as Mike pelted him, and Lucas smirked from the other side of Max, snorting to himself. Max spun to shoot him an unamused glance, before looking back to where Mike and Dustin were squabbling.

“Guys!” Will finally exclaimed, getting both of their attention after they had been arguing for an unreasonable amount of time, “The plan? Remember?”

Mike shot Dustin one last squinty-eyed look, before announcing dryly, “Party searches the woods for _Dustin’s_ grown-up loosed monster that almost ate Max and would totally not be there if it weren’t for _Dustin’s_ actions, say aye.”

“Hey!” Dustin whined out nasally as the rest of the group droned, _“Aye.”_

“Aye’s have it!” Mike declared sanctimoniously as Dustin gaped at the group.

“Max shouldn’t even be allowed to vote!” Dustin insisted passionately, “She can’t even come! She’s prisoner to her evil stepbrother after school, and you all know that!”

Max gaped, let out a dismissive scoff, “Oh, whatever! I can totally outmaneuver Billy. He's big, dumb, and slow, and I'm a Zoomer, remember?”

Mike shot Max as an unimpressed look as Will asked her curiously, “I thought Zoomer meant you are, like, fast. That’s why your speed stat is so high.”

“Zoomers can sneak, too,” Max asserted, trying to recall the unnecessarily complicated character sheet she had left in Wheeler’s basement the weekend past, “My dexterity is way higher than you guys’.”

Mike gave a sigh, before announcing flatly, “Whatever. We’re meeting up at four, so we have at least an hour of light before sunset. Show up or don’t, Max. We can search the woods with or without you. It’s no big deal.”

* * *

Steve Harrington’s biggest flaw was how easily he succumbed to peer-pressure, and if he hadn’t known that before, he certainly figured it out when The Party somehow got him to do the same shit that got his ass kicked the day previous: Driving them to the woods. Granted, now it was to search for a demo-dog that they believed had grown up into a demogorgon, so it all seemed that much more dire, but still. Steve had so many problems, the leading one being his weak-will.

“I’m supposed to be writing an essay right now,” Steve lamented to himself, stabbing a stake into the ground ferociously, “And my head is killing me.”

Dustin adjusted his cap, looking up at the older boy and puffing out a tired breath as he straightened to his full height, “Do you need my help?”

“ _Do I—?_ ” Steve echoed indignantly, pausing only briefly to gape before announcing resolutely, “You are in eighth grade, you little twerp! Don’t insult me! I think I can write my own damn essay without the help of a thirteen year-old, thank you very much!”

Maxine appeared from the dense foliage around them with a bucket in hand, brows slightly raised, “An essay, Harrington? You should ask Mike to help you. He’s stupidly good at English and stuff—“

Steve couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He threw his arms up into the air exasperatedly, letting the hammer in his hands fly free of his grasp and soar off behind him through the trees.

“I can’t believe you guys! You all think I’m stupid!!” Steve exclaimed helplessly, letting his arms flop miserably down at his sides, “I’m not stupid, okay? I’m—no! I’m just not! Ugh, whatever! Like, I’m not _that_ stupid, at least! Damn, Guys! You’re really bringing me down right now!”

“I don’t think you’re stupid, Steve,” Lucas stated as he appeared with a bat in hand, stopping beside Max so they stood shoulder to shoulder, “But, also, Mike is really good with writing—“

“See?!” Max exclaimed, gesturing toward Lucas emphatically, “He’s like _really_ good, right?”

“He comes up with all our campaigns, it’s true,” Dustin begrudgingly admitted, shamefully refusing to meet Steve’s gaze, and Steve made an offended choking sound before releasing a heavy sigh. Placing his hands on his hips, Steve shrugged his shoulders exasperatedly.

“Nancy is really good at English, too,” Steve muttered pitifully, “Maybe it’s a family thing…”

“Nancy is super smart,” Dustin agreed, “She’s probably good at every subject.“

Steve sighed wistfully, “Yeah, she is.”

“Guys!” Mike shouted in the distance, and everyone around the small clearing perked up, waiting for another sound, “I found something—!!”

They all broke off through the trees, hurrying along in two pairs of two, Steve leading Dustin and Max leading Lucas, before they all came across Mike Wheeler on the other side of a particularly large bush. Max pulled over some of the shrubbery to get a better look at Mike as he took a single knee and kneeled on the forest floor. When she pulled the greenery aside, it revealed one of the bear traps they had left a few nights before, food gone and clamped shut. Within its metal teeth, a bloody, rotting stump of flesh was left, swarmed with flies and other creepy crawlies.

Max screamed, rearing back and letting the branches smack Wheeler in the side of the head in the process, making the dark haired boy let out a bewildered squawk of pain.

“Ow!” He yowled, blustering and spitting at the twigs and leaves that swatted him across the face, “Max, what the hell?!”

“Mike, that is— _ugh!_ That’s a chopped off leg!!!” She shouted back belligerently, her voice settling into the loudest, most piercing tone she was capable of, and it had all the boys around her wincing, “What the hell is wrong with you?! Get away from it! There are flies on it—oh, my God! So gross!”

“Oh, ew,” Lucas grimaced in disgust, “Why are you sitting next to it, Mike?”

“ _Why am I—?!_ Lucas!!” Mike announced heatedly, “This is the leg of the monster! Hello?!”

Harrington settled his weight onto one leg, placing his closed fists on his hips as he asked contemplatively, “Well, where the hell is the rest of it? Couldn’t have gotten far with only three legs, could it?” 

Everyone looked around, wide-eyed, before Dustin was asking, “What road are we near, again?”


End file.
